


Twelve Days

by elysianprince



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Christmas Movie, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Lifetime Movie, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, Christmas Magic, Fluff, Happy Ending, Inspired by The Spirit of Christmas, M/M, Mentions of Death, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Has A Heart, despite watching this movie on Lifetime I ended up making it very Hallmark-y, holiday magic, if that's not a tag i'm starting it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21996250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elysianprince/pseuds/elysianprince
Summary: In which Tony finds himself in a town that looks like it crawled out of a Hallmark Christmas movie, trying to sell an inn he didn't know he owned, all while dealing with Steve Rogers, the resident ghost who has returned to haunt the inn each December during the twelve days of Christmas for the past seventy years. Tony has only one logical solution that benefits them both: break the curse that binds him - but falling for a man almost a century old wasn't among his plans.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 45
Kudos: 184





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this had been floating around in my mind for a while, and then I saw a tumblr post about how absolutely ludicrously powerful holiday magic is, and someone brought up The Spirit of Christmas, so I just _had_ to commit to actually writing this.
> 
> Thank you to [theinkquiry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinkquiry) for being my lovely beta.

He should have known his day was about to get a lot worse when Pepper came into his office with coffee and doughnuts from his favorite bakery a few blocks away.

“So there’s a situation with one of the properties your family owns,” she started the moment Tony had let his guard down and taken the first bite of sugary goodness.

“Nope, take it all back, Pep.” He interrupted, putting down the doughnut. “I don’t want bribery doughnuts, it ruins the taste.”

She rolled her eyes at him and continued, placing a file of papers on his desk. “As I was saying, we’ve been working on trimming down assets to even out some of the losses from the big switch, but there’s one upstate I’ve been having issues with getting it sold. It’s an old inn located in some quiet town, overlooks a small lake, lots of snow this time of year.”

“Sounds very Hallmark-y, gross.” He made a face. “If it’s that much trouble, you can just have it, I don’t care. Merry Christmas.”

She pretended to ponder it for a moment. “No, heels don’t go too well with cobblestone streets,” Pepper joked, a bit of mirth shining in her eyes.

“You’re right. It’d cramp your style.” He gave in and took another bite of the doughnut. It was just too good to resist. “So what’s the catch, why the doughnuts?”

“The inn hasn’t shown any profit in the past several years due to a decline in visitors and a noticeable increase in… _interesting_ complaints.” Tony raised an eyebrow at the last part.

“I need you to head there to settle everything.”

“And there it is. You know, I thought I paid people to take care of this kind of stuff.”

“You do, but for some reason they’ve completely muddled this whole process. Can you just do this one thing for me? Meet with the appraiser and get everything sorted out. I’m sure you’ll have it taken care of in just a day or two.”

Tony was sure he had the most petulant look on his face, but he was really starting to regret hiring someone who actually made him do his work and was entirely immune to his puppy-dog eyes. Pepper’s resistance hadn’t weakened over the years, either.

“Think of it as a vacation of sorts,” she added, clearly knowing she was going to win this argument like she always did. “It’s been a while since you’ve taken one.”

“This is payback for the strawberry incident, isn’t it?” He asked. “I really am sorry about that. You should totally give me points for at least remembering that there was some sort of connection there.”

Pepper gave him a look that shut him up pretty quickly.

“What even are these supposedly horrid complaints anyway?” He asked after a moment.

“Oh, the usual old historic building complaints. Creaky floors, locks getting stuck, unexplainable slamming of doors in rooms where no one is.” She waved it off nonchalantly. “Lots of them try to blame it on ghosts.”

“Boriiing,” Tony complained as he flipped open the file.

———

Tony parked his car next to what he assumed was the drab SUV that belonged to the appraiser he was supposed to be meeting. He supposed he was a little bit late, but only by like half an hour or so. The Audi had _not_ liked all this damn snow.

He was about to walk up the snow-dusted front steps when the front door flew open and a very harried-looking man in a suit (almost as drab as the SUV) rushed out of the house as if he couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Tony watched as the man stumbled through the snow and seemed to shout out a jumbled mess of an apology as he realized who he had just darted past. Tony just raised an eyebrow at the chaos as the man leapt into his SUV and peeled down the driveway, stirring up a flurry of snow in his wake.

Huh.

Tony proceeded into the house, cautiously checking his surroundings as he walked down the entry hallway. “Is anyone home?” he called out, honestly not knowing what kind of response he would get. There wasn’t an answer.

He could hear some faint noises coming from further inside the house, so carefully, he made his way in that direction, much to the dismay of Happy’s voice yelling inside his head for Tony to turn around and go back outside. He probably should’ve brought his security guard with him, but what was going to get him in this Santa Claus town? Ghosts?? Happy deserved some time off, anyway. 

Tony slowly made his way down the hallway as silently as he could manage. He passed by a collection of what appeared to be old, faded family photos, probably of whoever owned this place before his father bought it. He was momentarily distracted by the photographs when he noticed one in particular of a tall, blond man with broad shoulders that had clearly been taken outside the house. Next to it, there was a portrait of a much thinner young boy, though he had similar facial features to the taller man.

 _Must’ve been related_ , he thought before continuing forward.

As he was about to round a corner into what appeared to be the kitchen, a man stepped into the room and Tony nearly jumped a foot in the air at the sudden entrance.

“Ah, Mr. Stark.” The man greeted calmly, clearly not surprised by Tony’s presence at least. “Ms. Potts told me you’d be arriving sometime today.” He held out a hand for Tony to shake. “Phil Coulson, I’m the manager of the inn. It’s nice to meet you.”

Right. No ghosts, just eerily calm innkeepers. Tony shook his hand then gestured vaguely in the direction of the front door. “I think that was the appraiser I was supposed to be meeting.”

“He made quite a ruckus on his way out,” Coulson commented. Did everything he said have to sound so… weirdly contemplative? “Though, that tends to be how most of them leave,” he added with something of a chuckle.

“Now that you’re here, actually, I was on my way out, too. I’ll show you to your room first, Mr. Stark.” He motioned for Tony to follow him back into the hallway and led him up the stairs, pointing out various rooms and tossing out tidbits of information about the history. Tony wasn’t really listening, but he did tune in when Coulson mentioned the pantry and fridge had been freshly stocked.

As Phil was grabbing his own things to leave, Tony attempted to make small talk. “Why are you heading out so quickly? Hot date?”

“I prefer to give him his privacy,” was the innkeeper’s cryptic response as he walked out the front door.

“Who?” 

Coulson didn’t answer, just smiled at Tony and gave a short wave as he got into his truck. “Good luck, Mr. Stark. I’d keep my distance if I were you.” He drove off without providing any further explanation.

Well, that wasn’t ominous at all.

And then Tony was alone with his luggage, sitting on the edge of the decently comfortable mattress in his guest room, with absolutely no idea what he should do next. Food, maybe? He puttered down the stairs to the kitchen and rifled through the contents of the fridge and pantry until he had put together a sandwich. Was Tony the only guest? There sure was a hell of a lot of food for just one person over the next few days.

At least he wouldn’t have to wander into town to get anything. The town looked like it had crawled out of a Hallmark movie where it was Christmas year round. It made Tony kinda twitchy just to drive through it. He certainly couldn’t imagine Howard here, but he might vaguely remember his mom mentioning it once or twice. Maria had been enamored with the idea of celebrating Christmas in a quaint town away from the bustle of the city, but Tony wasn’t sure if his parents had ever even stepped foot in this godforsaken town.

After cleaning up the mess he’d made while making his sandwich, Tony set the security system Coulson had shown him in the hallway. It was some archaic, store-bought system, and he couldn’t help but miss JARVIS as he punched the numbers into the worn out keypad.

Once he was back in the guest room, he called Pepper to update her on the whole situation.

“Hey, Pepper-pot,” Tony greeted her when she answered the phone.

“How’d the meeting with the appraiser go?”

“Mmmm, it didn’t.”

“It… didn’t,” Pepper repeated, dully.

“When I got here, he was running out the door looking like, well... like he’d seen a ghost,” Tony explained wryly. He heard Pepper sigh heavily on the other line.

“That’s just fantastic,” she commented. “I’ll see if I can find another one who can meet you this week. Other than that, how is everything so far?”

“Well,” Tony started. “The town doesn’t even have a stoplight, there’s like two feet of snow everywhere, and that strange innkeeper guy said a bunch of cryptic shit before he left.”

“Phil? He seemed lovely over the phone.”

“ _Lovely?_ How in the wor—” He was interrupted by the sound of a door slamming shut downstairs. “The _hell_ was that?!”

“Tony? Is everything okay over there?” There was a worried tone to Pepper’s voice.

He hesitated to answer her, listening for more noises from downstairs. Which apparently worried her more.

“Do I need to call the cops?”

“No, no, it’s fine. I just heard something downstairs.” And then he could hear the sound of heavy footsteps on the creaky floorboards in the hallway. “Okay, maybe I should go check it out.”

“Are you absolutely sure I shouldn’t be calling the cops right now? I’d really rather not be on the phone with you when you get murdered.”

“Your concern is touching, wait. _‘When’_ I get murdered?? I’m starting to question your motives for sending me here.” Tony took a moment to be a little indignant before he quietly crept out of the room. He grabbed the long metal poker from beside the fireplace on the way. “No, it’s fine. I’ve got a... sharp, pokey thing.”

“How reassuring.” He could practically hear Pepper roll her eyes. Maybe he really should work on more self-defense stuff like Happy kept bugging him about.

Tony slowly made his way down the stairs, brandishing the fireplace poker in front of him with one hand, his phone in the other with Pepper still on the line. He made it all the way to the security system in the dark hallway and hadn’t seen or heard anything else.

The damn system had been turned off somehow. Tony scoffed at it, JARVIS would _never_. He had just started punching in the code again when he saw movement in his peripheral. He whipped around to face the large shadow at the end of the hallway, bumping into a bookshelf as he turned, jostling the contents of its shelves.

“Oh, shit.” He could hear Pepper frantically asking if he was okay as books started to tumble down, making a shit ton of noise as they hit the floor around his feet.

Then there was a hard crack against his head, and everything went black.

———

As Tony blearily blinked his eyes open, his surroundings finally swam into view through the blinding morning light coming in through the windows. He was laid out on the couch in the living room of the house with a blanket thrown over him. Oh, and a killer headache.

He stayed there for a moment, trying to remember how the hell he wound up there when it finally started coming back to him. Last night, an intruder… and heavy objects falling off a bookshelf... Okay, no, too much thinking with this bad of a headache and no caffeine. Tony slowly got up off the couch, feeling a bit like he just got off a Tilt-a-Whirl, and pulled the blanket around himself like a warm cocoon before shuffling towards the kitchen in search of coffee.

“Good morning, Mr. Stark, how are you feeling?” Coulson was in front of the stove, cooking some bacon that smelled mouth-wateringly delicious, and maybe some other food, too.

“Like an intruder bashed me over the head,” he grumbled as he poured himself a cup of coffee before taking a seat at the kitchen table.

The corner of his mouth ticked up as if Tony had said something funny. “I think it was the vase that was on the bookshelf actually.”

“Why are you here anyway? Thought you said you were gonna be avoiding this place like the plague,” Tony asked after draining half of his cup. Oh, sweet caffeine.

“Ms. Potts called me, concerned about your well-being because you told her there was an intruder, and then hung up after there was a loud crash. She was about to call the police, but I assured her that the situation was under control.” Tony was really questioning Pepper’s definition of “lovely” as Coulson explained.

“So, I take it you met Mr. Rogers last night?” He asked as he placed a plate of bacon and eggs on the table in front of Tony.

“Big hulking shadow in the hallway? Can’t really say I’d want to be his neighbor,” Tony answered through a mouthful of food. “Is that the guy you mentioned steering clear of yesterd—“

And that was when another man walked soundlessly into the kitchen, scaring the shit out of Tony, which resulted in him choking a bit on his food. “Jesus, shit! I have a potential head injury, don’t startle me like that.” He noticed Coulson politely hiding a laugh with his hand.

The man nodded silently at Coulson but hardly acknowledged Tony’s presence as he went about the kitchen, making himself a plate of food to eat. It was a bit difficult for Tony to tear his eyes away from the man, he was very err, _noticeable_. The man’s back was turned to Tony, so he just kinda blankly stared at it and holy… those shoulders were something else. The white shirt he had on was doing its absolute best to stretch and cover those shoulders. His hair was a pale blond color styled in a way that seemed a bit old-fashioned in Tony’s opinion. Finally, Nice Shoulders turned around, and Tony was able to get a good look at his face as the man sat down across from him at the table. His expression was a bit surly, but it didn’t negatively impact his handsome features, which seemed familiar…

Realization dawned on Tony after a moment. “Oh, hey. You’re the guy from the photo in the hallway,” he commented, vaguely pointing in the general direction of the photograph collection down the hall.

Nice Shoulders Guy from the Photograph looked up at Tony, beautiful blue eyes staring directly at him for a moment before he focused on his food, which was only kinda unnerving, really. “Why are you here? There aren’t supposed to be any guests after the twelfth.” 

“Well, see, I’m not really a guest. Technically the owner, but hopefully not for much longer. Just gotta find an appraiser around here who won’t hightail it outta here at the first creak of a floorboard.” The guy had stopped shoveling food into his mouth, and his full attention was on Tony. Now it was definitely unnerving. “Normally there are people who take care of this stuff, but I think my PA is exacting revenge on me for accidentally almost subjecting her to an allergy attack.”

“You’re planning on selling the inn?” The man quickly turned to Coulson, eyes gone wide. “Is this true?”

Coulson, to his credit, looked very tired suddenly. “He’s telling the truth, Steve.”

Steve? abruptly stood up from the table, chair screeching across the floor at the sudden movement. His surliness had turned to outright anger, and it was directed right at Tony, who did well to resist squirming in his seat.

“I think you need to leave,” he gritted out.

Oh, ho. Definitely not. “Gonna kick me out of my own house?”

“It’s not yours.”

“Unfortunately, my name is on the deed, but not for long. I’m sure some developer would love a property like this. That stupid lake would be a great parking lot once it’s filled in.” Suddenly Tony was standing, too, and walking around the side of the table to stand toe to toe with Steve. He wasn’t quite sure why he was picking a fight like this, but it felt way more tempting than backing down.

Tony was staring down those blue eyes that were so full of fury, like a gathering storm, when something seemed to snap in them. Tony barely had time to curse his own foolishness when the man surged forward, and Tony braced himself for whatever kind of punch was likely heading his way, only for an intense iciness to rush right through him instead, leaving him shivering and standing alone in the room with Coulson.

“What… what the _fuck_ was that?!” Tony was proud that his voice only broke a little bit. He slumped back into his seat at the table and pulled the blanket back around his shoulders to fight off the lingering chill from whatever the hell just happened to him.

Coulson had the audacity to look amused. “That was Steve Rogers… the spirit who haunts the inn every year around Christmastime.”

“You’re lying.” 

Coulson shook his head as he finally sat down at the table with his breakfast, too. “Unfortunately, I don’t think I’d be capable of making this one up.”

“He’s not a ghost. I just watched him eat like, three eggs in a matter of two minutes.”

“Pretty sure that one in _Ghostbusters_ liked pizza.” Oh god, did Coulson just tell a joke? Forget ghosts, Tony had somehow entered into the Twilight Zone when he stepped foot into this godforsaken place.

“Every thirteenth of December he shows up,” Coulson began explaining as Tony just stared at him, disbelieving. “When I first started working here, we still booked guests during those days, but with the number of complaints and the strain it put on him, it clearly wasn’t worth it, even for the holiday traffic. A few years ago I started blocking off the thirteenth through the twenty-fourth to give Mr. Rogers some privacy.”

“He’s not here year-round? What, is this some sort of Ghost of Christmas Past bullshit?” 

“In the fifteen years that I’ve worked at this inn, I’ve only seen him during the twelve days leading up to Christmas.”

Tony pondered what Phil had said for a moment. “Okay, so, _why_ is he here? The hell kind of unfinished business does he have? That’s usually their deal in stories.”

“It’s a curse.”

Tony jumped at Steve’s sudden intrusion into the conversation. “God, you have _got_ to stop doing that, it’s bad for my heart. Wait, you just said ‘it’s a curse’ and actually meant it.”

Steve rolled his eyes at Tony and wow, did he just get sassed by a ghost? You know, if they even did exist.

“You don’t believe me,” Steve gave him a challenging look. “Fine, follow me.”

For some reason, he actually scrambled after the guy, grabbing his coat from the hook by the door and jamming his feet into his shoes before following him outside. Steve led him through the snow-covered yard to the gate at the edge of the property line. Once they got to the gate itself, Steve turned around to face Tony with a smirk before he stepped backwards and vanished into thin air. 

_What._

“Do you believe me now?” A voice called from the house behind Tony. He whipped around to find Steve waving at him from the doorstep.

“Hate to break it to you, Rogers.” Tony grinned at the man before continuing. “But I love a good puzzle. There’s no way I’m leaving now.”

“...shit.” Clearly, his little demonstration had the opposite effect he had hoped for, and Steve slammed the door shut as Tony scrambled back up the porch steps.

He found Steve in the kitchen, assisting Coulson with the clean-up from breakfast. Tony picked up an apple from the bowl in the center of the table and examined it closely before lobbing it at the back of the ghost’s head. It made contact, and Steve whipped around to glare at him.

“What the hell was that for?”

“Your little trick at the property line made a convincing argument, but my hypothesis needs a bit more testing.” Tony started looking around at the other things scattered across the kitchen table before settling on his cellphone. Well, it was worth a shot.

This time he waited until Steve was finished helping with the dishes and turned around. He chucked the phone directly at Steve’s chest, only for the phone to simply pass through him and hit the cabinet with a _thunk_ before clattering to the floor. The man was staring at him with a rather impressive deadpan, and Coulson was ignoring both of them with an even more impressive amount of professionalism.

“Gotta test a hypothesis multiple times,” Tony justified his behavior.

Tony spent the rest of the day following Steve around the house and asking him various questions, trying to get a feel for the situation the man was in. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do until Pepper found another appraiser, and technically he was on “vacation” anyway. The only problem was that he wasn’t really getting very helpful answers from Steve.

“Did you piss off a witch?”

Steve had rolled his eyes at that one. “Witches don’t exist.”

“Riiight. Of course not, because that would be just plain crazy.”

“So when the clock strikes midnight on Christmas, do you just pull a Terminator and say _‘I’ll be back’_ before going poof?”

Confused, Steve had just kinda scrunched his face at that one (and Tony shouldn’t have found it as endearing as he did, oh boy, when he wasn’t scowling he was unfortunately cute).

“Is that a reference to something?”

Tony sighed. “Yeah, it’s just a movie, don’t worry about it.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, how did you die?”

“...I don’t… remember.”

Well, shit.

It was just the two of them for dinnertime that evening, as Coulson had left at some point after the debacle at breakfast. Before making his own food, Tony watched as the ghost somehow was able to interact with almost everything in the kitchen. It was fascinating to watch, and not entirely just because Rogers happened to be a bit easy on the eyes.

“You know,” Tony said, getting Steve’s attention. “If I came back from the dead, I’d be eating something a lot more exciting than a grilled cheese.”

Rogers didn’t dignify Tony’s comment with a verbal response, but he could see the man’s jaw get visibly tighter as Tony continued talking. Geez, how much stiffer could a dead guy get?

“Maybe I’d have a cheeseburger. Actually, no, I’d _definitely_ have a cheeseburger, multiple ones, at that. Hey, did they have cheeseburgers back when you were alive?” It was painfully obvious Tony was getting on his nerves, but really that was just encouragement to keep going. “Possibly the greatest invention of all time, food-wise at least.”

“It was the 1940’s, not the 1800’s,” Steve finally answered as he stood up from the table, patience wearing thin.

“Damn, now I want a burger. Do you know if there’s anywhere in this backwards ass town that sells them?”

There was an awful clatter as Steve tossed his plate into the sink. “Why the hell are you still here?” he demanded, turning around to glare at Tony. The anger etched on his face resembled his look from their argument that morning, but with something that might have been a flash of pain lying under the surface.

“Because I’m going to solve this,” Tony stated, matter-of-factly.

“There isn’t anything to solve. We tried before, and it didn’t work.” Rogers deflated a bit, his anger subsiding before he shuttered his emotions off entirely. “You should just leave.”

“We?”

Steve left the room without answering him, and a few moments later, Tony heard a door slam down the hallway. Well, that was probably enough of an answer for now.

After half-heartedly making himself something for dinner, Tony retreated back to the guest room he was staying in and decided he should probably check in with Pepper and let her know he was still alive.

“Pep, there’s a problem,” he said as soon as she picked up the call.

“I’d be more concerned if you didn’t have any problems, Tony.” The exasperation in her tone bled more into fondness than irritation. “Also, you’re lucky that Phil let me know you were okay otherwise I really was going to call the police. I thought I was going to be responsible for sending you to your death!”

“Eh, that’s still debatable.”

She sighed at him. “So what’s the issue?”

“There’s a really hot ghost here.”

The line was silent for a moment.

“ _Tony._ ”

“Pepper.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? Phil said you hit your head hard enough to black out. Do I need to send Rhodey your way? I think he’s in town for the holidays.”

“What? No, don’t send him to this winter wonderland hellscape, Pepper. I swear I’m fine, scout’s honor.”

“You were never in the scouts.”

“Yeah, I’m swearing on their honor, not mine.”

“So, what? Do I need to be looking for an exorcist instead of an appraiser? Natasha probably knows someone, actually.”

“She’s terrifying in the best kind of way, but no, an exorcist is entirely unnecessary. I’ve got this.”

“You’ve got this.” Pepper repeated, dubiously. 

He flopped onto the bed, collapsing onto the surprisingly soft pillows. “Yeah, I’m gonna help him figure out whatever weird voodoo, lingering regrets, whatever is keeping him stuck here… Then he’ll like, move on or whatever, and we can sell this place, and I’ll never have to come back here again.”

Pepper sighed again. “Just keep me updated then. I’ll let you know if I find an appraiser brave enough to face this terrifying... ‘hot ghost.’”

“You’re the best,” he couldn’t help but smile fondly. Pepper always had his back.

“Will that be all, Mr. Stark?” She asked, tone edging on playful.

“Yes, that will be all, Ms. Potts.” Before hanging up, he added, “Give Nat my regards.”

Pepper laughed and said she would, then ended the call. Tony just laid there for a while, his phone still in hand, staring up at the ceiling.

What the hell has he gotten himself into?

———

The next day, Tony cornered Steve in the small study that was down the hall. The man was reading a book that was so dog-eared it looked like he had maybe read it about sixty times. Tony sat down on an armchair directly across the room from him and decided to just leap right in without testing the waters first.

“Okay, Marley. Yesterday’s little game of twenty questions wasn’t all that productive, so I think we should start researching your past a bit.”

Steve peered at Tony over the top of the book he was holding and arched a questioning eyebrow at him. “You don’t know how to quit, do you, Stark?”

“Nope, I’ve been told it’s an endearing character flaw.”

The other man sighed in defeat and set down his book. “Alright then, what do you have in mind?”

“Well, covering the basics is always a great starting point,” Tony began, waving his hand as he spoke. “So, why the twelve days before Christmas? It’s kinda past the time for spookiness, unless you really are going for the whole ‘Ghost of Christmas Past’ thing. In which case, I have to say that I am definitely not Scrooge in this scenario.”

The ghost shrugged. “This isn’t something I decide myself. I don’t… I’m not even sure where I am when I’m not here. I just wake up here, and it’s December thirteenth all over again.”

“That… honestly sounds absolutely fucking miserable, sorry,” Tony commented with a heavy sigh.

Steve just toyed with the corner of his book, a wry smile on his face. “Don’t really think I’ve got much of a say in it.”

“Yesterday,” Tony decided to bring up, carefully watching Steve’s expression for signs of discomfort. “You mentioned ‘we tried before,’ but who’s ‘we’ and what did you all try?”

The ghost stood up and crossed the room to look out the window overlooking the front yard. Ooh, dramatic.

“I don’t know how long it’d been, maybe a year or so after I died. Ma’s family moved away, so no one had found out about my… situation. But for some reason, my pal Buck came by during Christmastime and found me here, ya know, like this.” He vaguely gestured to himself. “We looked for some way to fix whatever had happened, but nothing we found worked…”

Steve hesitated for a moment before continuing, expression somber as he continued looking out the window instead of making eye contact with Tony. “The last year I saw him, he’d come back to tell me he’d been drafted and was shippin’ out for Europe soon. After that… well, I didn’t see him again after that.”

Tony stayed silent as Rogers worked through his emotions on the subject. Clearly, this friend had meant the world to him, and it reminded him of Rhodey and the dread that settled in Tony’s gut every time his best friend went overseas into warzones.

“I haven’t… tried anything since then.”

That was when Tony interjected. “Steve, if he died in the war, that had to have been seventy years ago. All this time and you haven’t kept looking for a solution…?”

A rueful laugh, laced with self-deprecation, escaped from Steve at that. “I’m well-aware. Sometimes I think it’s what I deserve for not being at his side. We grew up together, I should have served alongside him in the war.”

“But part of me is almost relieved that I haven’t seen him since then… because I don’t want him to be stuck like this. I don’t want him to be stuck here, and especially not over there.” His eyes were glazed over, like he was lost somewhere else in that moment.

Tony honed in on that last part. “That reminds me, if you’re only here for twelve days out of the year, where are you the rest of the time? Please tell me it’s somewhere warmer.” He tried for a joke at the end to break the tension, but it didn’t seem to have worked.

“It’s colder. Much colder.”

He stared at the ghost for a moment, taking in his features, those gorgeous blue eyes seemed locked on something in the distance, or rather, something that wasn’t there at all. Afraid to lose the man to it, Tony hopped up out of his chair and clapped his hands a bit too loudly.

“Well, alright. I suppose that’s as good a starting point as any.” His voice sounded way too loud in the silent study. “So, is there anything useful on these shelves? Some sort of Crossing Over for Dummies, or maybe a teenage diary full of your darkest secrets?”

That seemed to have brought Steve back to reality, at least. He could have sworn he almost saw a smile on his face as he finally turned away from the window.

“If you want information like that, you’d probably be more likely to find it at the town’s library.”

“Hm, maybe Coulson would know, he seems like the type. I’ll give him a call in a bit.”

They spent the rest of the day sorting through the various books in the study, looking for anything that might be even remotely important to Steve and his life, but they kept coming up short. Ironically enough, most of the information they found about the town and its happenings were from even before Steve’s time. As they worked, Tony kept thinking back to the moment from earlier when Steve had bared so much about the pain and guilt he carried with him regarding his best friend. Tony wasn’t sure what he had done to earn the man’s trust that quickly, but he was amazed at the truthfulness of that moment. That surly exterior Steve donned seemed to be his only defense against everything he’d been through. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to go through this for seventy years, how incredibly lonely the man must be after so long. Maybe he shouldn’t poke at him as much, though something about having Steve’s attention on him, furious or not, was strangely thrilling.

Eventually, they decided to call it quits for the evening, as apparently even ghosts have a regular appetite. Dinner started off as a quiet affair, each of them cooked their own food and didn’t really talk much as they sat across from one another at the table in the kitchen.

Never one for awkward silences (but definitely one for awkward rambling), Tony felt like maybe he should get to know the man in front of him a little better after the emotional moment he’d had in the study.

“How’d you end up here in Whoville anyway? You don’t really sound like you’re from around these parts, but your accent doesn’t come through enough for me to pinpoint it.”

“Oh, uh, I’m from Brooklyn.” There was a small smile on Steve’s face as he started to explain. “Ma and I hadta move out here to live with her sister when she got sick. I couldn’t manage to take care of her by myself _and_ keep a roof over our heads, so there wasn’t really much choice. Da died in the war.”

Tony nodded. “Your mom, was she, uh…?”

“She passed a coupla weeks before Christmas.”

“I’m sorry.” Tony couldn’t quite bring himself to make eye contact with Steve in that moment. He cleared his throat after an uneasy pause. “Uh. Mine, too.”

“What?” 

“My mother died, too. Shortly before Christmas,” Tony explained, a bit hesitant.

“It’s… hard, isn’t it?” There was more emotion in Steve’s eyes than when he had slipped into his memories of loss earlier.

“Funny thing is, well, not really so funny, but my dad’s gone, too. Actually...” He stopped to scoff. “He was the one behind the wheel. There was uh… a car accident. Howard always acted like he was invincible, even more so after knocking back a bottle of scotch. They both died on impact.”

Tony wasn’t entirely sure why he was sharing this bit of information with Steve, but it just felt like he needed to, like out of all of the people out there, he would understand. And he did.

That night, instead of hearing from Pepper again, Rhodey called him.

“Hey, Tones,” he started when Tony answered the phone, a hint of mischief in his voice. “Pepper told me you’ve got a bit of a Casper the Friendly Ghost situation going on. Do we need to call in the Ghostbusters?”

Tony fondly rolled his eyes at his friend, but he couldn’t help but respond with a crude joke about wanting the ghost to bust him, which earned a suffering groan from Rhodey.

“Aw, man. I really did not need that kind of imagery, Tony,” he complained. “So… this is for real? Not some kind of weird roleplay thing you’re dragging us into?”

“That was one time,” protested Tony.

“One time that I unfortunately will not be forgetting, despite my best efforts,” Rhodey added, pointedly, before getting back to the main issue. “So, how friendly are we talking?” 

“Well, he was kind of an asshole at first, but I think there might be some Casper in there under the scowl,” Tony explained, a bit of affection somehow finding its way into his voice at the thought of Steve.

“Oh no, I know that voice.” Rhodey let out a long-suffering sigh. “Am I going to be giving a dead man the shovel talk?”

Apparently Tony hesitated for a beat too long before answering because Rhodey continued. “Tony, I know how you get. You see a sad puppy and you want to fix all its sad puppy problems without any regard for yourself. But what’s gonna happen when this puppy isn’t sad anymore and finally crosses over into the big dog park in the sky?”

“That, is by far the worst analogy you have ever come up with, platypus.”

Rhodey laughed it off. “Man, just try not to get in too deep, alright? I worry about you.”

“All that worrying will make you age early, honeybear. You’ve seen what it’s done to Obama,” Tony tried to lighten the mood. “I’ll be fine.”

He said it to reassure Rhodey, even though part of him already knew it was too late.

———

The following morning, Coulson stopped by with some boxes of archived newspapers from the town’s library, so Tony and Steve spent the day sorting through the papers and looking for anything remotely useful. Well, Tony sorted, and Steve supervised because his hand phased right through the first newspaper he tried to pick up.

Tony couldn’t help but grumble about how convenient it was that Steve couldn’t help with the physical work of sorting through the hundreds of papers. His complaining got a small laugh out of Steve, though, so maybe it was worth it. 

After a few hours, Tony finally had separated possible leads into a pile and began to look through the papers more closely for any articles that might hold a clue to the mystery of Steve’s death. He had narrowed it down to any papers printed during December in the year Steve had died and January of the following year. They made small talk while Tony gently flipped through the pages that had been “archived” in plastic protector sleeves that were probably purchased at the nearest scrapbooking store. Occasionally Steve made a comment here or there whenever something caught his eye. It was almost… pleasant, if not for how tedious it was and how Tony’s eyes were beginning to hurt after straining to read the faded text.

Finally, they found something. A report about an accident at the lake in front of the house dated December the seventeenth.

Tony began to summarize the main points of the article out loud. “A few days before this was printed there was an accident with two children on the lake out front, it sounds like they had fallen through the ice while playing on it. Thankfully, they were saved by an unidentified man…” His voice trailed off as he read the rest of the passage, and he cleared his throat before resuming.

“...who tragically fell through the ice after rescuing the children. Judging by the descriptions given by the children of the man who pulled them from the water, authorities believe the mysterious hero to be a Steven G. Rogers, who was reported missing three days later by his family. A body was never found to confirm the hero’s identity.”

A loaded silence had settled over the two men. Tony continued to stare at the faded newspaper in front of him rather than find out what Steve looked like in that moment.

Eventually he couldn’t take the silence any longer. “Oh look, they used the photo of you from the hallway. Handsome.”

Steve leaned back heavily in his chair and dragged his hands down his face, concealing it from Tony.

“Is it coming back now?” Tony asked, quietly, even though the answer was clear through Steve’s body language.

The man dropped his hands from his face, revealing a weary expression that looked almost out of place on such a young face. He nodded but didn’t volunteer any details.

Something wasn’t settling well with Tony, so he had to ask, “...Did Bucky know about this?”

He let out a long sigh before answering the question. “Actually, I already knew they had never found… my body. Bucky had said there wasn’t a funeral, and that there wasn’t… a gravesite to visit, or anything.” Tony tensed at that.

“But he never found out about the accident?”

Steve shook his head. “Not that I can recall.”

“If you knew they never found you, why didn’t you mention it?”

At that, he gave Tony a _look_ , though it wasn’t nearly as severe as the kind of looks he shot Tony’s way on the first day.

“Oh, right. I guess that could potentially be a touchy subject,” he answered himself.

The silence returned after that.

“You know,” Tony’s brain was kicking into overdrive suddenly, trying to come up with a solution. “Search and rescue has come a long way since then. I can probably find a team to come in and search the lake for…” He gestured vaguely, the words not wanting to come out of his mouth. He didn’t want to think about the possibility that all that physically remained of the man in front of him was lying forgotten at the bottom of a lake. “Or I could design something… Something that would be able to scan the bottom and find, find you.”

He knew he was rambling at that point, but maybe this was it. Maybe this was why Steve was stuck in this weird limbo.

Finally, Steve spoke.

“No, you don’t have to do that for me.” His voice was soft but surprisingly steady, all things considered.

“What? But Steve, what if this is it? What if this is the thing that’s holding you back?” Tony protested, unable to fully rein in his emotions.

“It isn’t,” he calmly answered, face giving Tony no hints as to what the man was feeling. “I know that much.”

He opened his mouth to object again, but Steve stood up from the table and quietly walked towards the door. He stopped in front of the doorway and looked back over his shoulder at Tony, making eye contact with him.

“Thank you, Tony,” Steve said, his blue eyes bright with sincerity. The door softly clicked shut behind him as he left Tony in the study, at a complete loss as to what just happened.

Steve didn’t come down for dinner that night. 

On his way to his own room, Tony found himself hesitating outside of Steve’s bedroom door, hand raised to knock, but he decided against it and turned away.

———

Thankfully, he was in the kitchen the next morning.

Steve’s movements seemed a bit subdued, and he didn’t acknowledge Tony’s presence aside from the nod he gave when Tony walked into the room. He didn’t appear to be upset about yesterday’s developments, just maybe a bit… pensive. 

“Sooo,” Tony started, poking at the eggs on his plate. “If we’ve eliminated your death as the source of your lingering regrets, maybe there’s something else around here that we’ve missed.”

Steve considered his words for a moment. “Well, we’ve already gone through the entire study, and you sorted through the archived papers yesterday, so I’m not sure what else that leaves to be investigated.”

“Oh!” He snapped his fingers as it suddenly dawned on him. “We haven’t checked out the attic yet. What if there’s something up there that’ll trigger something for you?”

The ghost agreed, seeming a bit hesitant, but half an hour later he was trudging alongside Tony into the attic. It was disgustingly dusty upstairs, as if the stacks of boxes hadn’t been disturbed in decades. Belatedly, Tony wished he had a mask to wear so his allergies didn’t kill him the next day.

The space was small, even more so with the dozens and dozens of boxes towering along the sides of the attic. He noticed Steve was having to duck down to avoid smacking his head on the rafters, and it was honestly kind of cute. Lots of things that Steve did were cute, and it was starting to be a problem for Tony.

“Alright,” Tony clapped his hands together and frowned when a puff of dust erupted from where he had already touched a few of the boxes. “I say we divide and conquer, you take the left side, and I’ll sort through what’s here on the right.”

“You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you?” Steve commented with a warm laugh that had Tony beaming in response.

“That would make you my Watson, would it not?” Tony couldn’t help but wink at the man. “You do have a grand gift for silence, Rogers.”

It was much easier to sort through the attic since Steve was actually able to touch the boxes and their contents, unlike the newspaper Coulson had brought them. Tony wasn’t sure what kind of small talk to make while they worked, so he took his chances and asked about Steve’s best friend.

Surprisingly, Steve opened up a bit and began to tell Tony about his childhood with Bucky, about growing up in Brooklyn and constantly getting into trouble and fights. It was hard for Tony to imagine the absolute truck of a man in front of him ever needing saving in a fight, but Steve claimed he used to be small and sickly as a kid.

“Wait,” Tony paused in his search to stare at Steve. “Is that photo downstairs of that frail kid actually you?”

He caught a glimpse of a bashful smile before Steve ducked to hide it, but he definitely couldn’t hide the blush that was spreading up his neck. Oooh, boy.

“Yeah, that’s… that’s me.” Steve confirmed, running his hand through his hair like it might be some sort of nervous habit. “Hit a bit of a growth spurt.”

“ _I’ll say_ ,” added Tony.

The blush was only growing deeper, and Steve waved off Tony’s comment, clearly not great at handling the attention on himself.

And because Tony had truly excellent people skills, as he was frequently reminded by Pepper, he ruined the mood entirely with his next question.

“Do you think it could be guilt?”

Tony felt his heart sink as the smile vanished from Steve’s face and his brow furrowed. His gaze lost that twinkle Tony was starting to get used to seeing when they were together. “Could what be guilt?”

Never one to back down, or notice when he really should stop while he was ahead, Tony kept going. “The thing that’s keeping you here… Could it be the guilt you’re carrying around about Bucky’s death?”

Open mouth, insert foot.

The man’s posture had gone rigid, so Tony chanced a look in his direction and was met with an icy cold glare.

“I should have been in that unit with him.”

“You can keep telling yourself that all you want, but you can’t keep beating yourself up over something that happened seventy years ago,” Tony couldn’t help but snap back, annoyed at Steve’s martyr complex.

“He always looked out for me, and when it came down to it, I couldn’t do the same for him. I wasn’t there when he needed me.” There was so much pain and grief laced through Steve’s words.

“Listen, Steve, I may not have known the guy, but if he was worthy enough for you to consider him your best friend, there’s no way he would hold you accountable for his death. Bucky wouldn’t want you to punish yourself like this,” he said with finality.

For a moment, Tony thought Steve was going to continue to argue with him, but instead his anger deflated a bit, his shoulders dropping. Neither of them pushed the subject further, but they didn’t return to the easygoing atmosphere that had been between them before. 

It was quiet after that, and Tony didn’t attempt to make more conversation in case he shoved his other foot in his mouth. He returned his focus to the search and was about to chalk it up as a lost cause since they hadn’t found anything of note yet. There were boxes upon boxes of stuff that looked like it had maybe belonged to Steve’s aunt, and the rest looked like it belonged to the inn. They had yet to uncover anything that belonged to Steve himself, or anything that even related to him in any sort of personal way.

Then he noticed an easel tucked away in the corner of the attic, covered in layers of cobwebs. It looked like it had been there even longer than the storage boxes. He got curious and moved closer to check it out. 

Next to the easel was a stack of small cases, and it looked like they might contain different sets of art supplies. The dust on the cases was so thick that the dark wood was practically white.

“Hey, Rogers. Check this out.” He motioned for Steve to come over. When Steve saw what Tony was investigating, he tensed up immediately.

“Don’t touch those.” His voice was oddly unsteady.

“What? Why not?” Tony gave him a questioning look and reached out to flick open the latch on the top case anyway.

“Just leave it,” Steve took on a commanding tone as he advanced on Tony. 

Considering how much Tony hated being told not to do things, Steve had basically just asked him to open up the case, pretty please. He gingerly lifted open the lid to the case, and in his peripheral he saw Steve halt to a stop.

The old wooden box was full of drawing supplies, pencils and pieces of charcoal and chalk. He glanced over his shoulder at Steve, who was still rooted to the spot and looking just as furious as he had during their first argument.

“It’s just some art stuff. What’s the big deal?” was definitely the wrong thing to say.

“What’s the big deal?” Steve scoffed incredulously at Tony. He closed the distance between them and quickly reached past him to close the case, but his hand just passed right through it.

And that, somehow, was the final straw for Steve.

“Is this some sort of game to you?” He demanded, nostrils flaring and jaw clenched tightly enough that the sight of it made Tony’s teeth hurt.

“What the hell, Rogers? I’m just trying to help!”

“Oh, what was it that you said? That I was a puzzle to solve?” Tony reflexively stepped back away from Steve.

“What? No! That’s not true at all,” he tried to defend himself, but internally winced when he recalled that was almost exactly what he had said originally.

“You don’t care at all, you can’t wait to be rid of me. I’m nothing but an obstacle keeping you from selling this place,” Steve continued, taking another step towards him. Tony could feel a chill creeping up his spine as Steve came closer.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Now Tony was angry, too. “Don’t you want to move on?!”

Steve stared him straight in the eye, his blue gaze practically frozen over with contempt now. “More than you could ever know.”

The ghost stormed out of the attic without another word, leaving Tony at a loss for whatever the fuck just happened. Suddenly feeling drained, Tony slumped against the nearest stack of cardboard boxes, not caring that he was getting covered in dust.

_Way to go, Stark_ , he thought cruelly.

Steve didn’t come to the kitchen for dinner that night, either.

Not wanting this to become a pattern, Tony decided that maybe he should perhaps apologize for whatever transgression he clearly made in the attic. He knocked on Steve’s bedroom door a couple times and called his name, but there was no reply. He tried to turn the doorknob, but it was locked. Closing his eyes, he let his forehead _thunk_ against the door and sighed heavily before giving up and turning away.

———-

He woke up the next morning after tossing and turning all night feeling like utter shit with a splitting headache. He supposed he deserved it, though, so he shuffled down the stairs to the kitchen to drown his pain in coffee.

Tony had almost finished his first mug when Coulson appeared out of nowhere, nearly causing him to spill the rest when he jumped. “Good morning, Mr. Stark. How is everything?”

“Holy shit, now you’re doing it, too!”

The innkeeper just gave him that annoyingly calm, yet amused smile. “Rough night?”

“I fucked up,” Tony confessed as he slumped into a chair. Instead of commenting, Phil waited for him to continue.

“I think I’ve earned myself a permanent position on Steve’s shit list,” he began explaining, though he wasn’t sure why. The guy just had one of those faces that made a person spill their guts. “I made the grave mistake of asking about some art supplies in the attic, though it probably didn’t help any that I had yelled at him about his dead best friend right before that.”

“Oh, I’m fairly certain those belong to Mr. Rogers.” Coulson gestured towards the rest of the house. “I’ve never asked him, but a few pieces of artwork around the house have his signature on them. They’re quite lovely, aren’t they?”

“...What?” Tony blinked at Coulson.

“Had you not noticed? There’s one right in the hallway, actually.”

Of course, Tony immediately got up from the table and hurried down the hallway to see what Coulson was talking about. Sure enough, there was a framed drawing hanging on the wall that he had walked past at least a dozen times without ever giving it a second look. The drawing depicted a cityscape, and it felt oddly familiar, though Tony couldn’t quite place it. Maybe Brooklyn? That would make sense, considering Steve grew up there. Who knew if any of these buildings were even still standing today.

His eyes were finally drawn to the name scrawled in the bottom right corner of artwork. _Steve Rogers._

He thought back to the attic, remembering how Steve’s hand had gone straight through the case of his art supplies, and was hit with the overwhelming sense that maybe he’d been going about everything completely wrong.

Steve wasn’t around the entire day, most likely still holed up in his room, and Tony guessed that technically ghosts didn’t actually have to eat or anything like that. It felt kind of wrong to be puttering around the house without Steve there with him.

Tony attempted to work on some stuff Pepper emailed him about, but he just couldn’t focus on any of it because his mind kept wandering. The thought of how horrible it must feel to be cut-off from something one loved like that. Imagining not being able to interact with Dum-E and the other bots, not being able to work on his cars or any of his work projects felt like… well, it felt like cutting apart his soul and losing a piece of himself. So yeah, Steve’s reaction was pretty reasonable after Tony had spent the day dwelling on it.

After half-heartedly poking around on some business documents for a few hours, Tony decided there was something more important he needed to do.

Quietly, he poked around the house until he found a cleaning rag and some furniture polish in the hall closet, then he headed up to the attic. Everything was the same as they’d left it when Steve had stormed out the day before.

He put a bit of polish on the rag, careful to not use too much, thinking back to a time Jarvis had shown him when he was a kid. The dust was incredibly thick on the wooden cases, but after a few goes on each one, Tony had them looking almost good as new again. He used the other side of the rag to clean the cobwebs off the easel, and while he was working on it, he noticed that the screws needed a bit of oil. Recalling that he had noticed some in the hall closet while getting the rag, Tony went back and got it, applying just enough for the screws to turn smoothly again.

It felt wrong to leave Steve’s belongings in the attic just to gather dust again, so Tony carefully brought them downstairs to the study, arranging the easel near the window.

That night, Tony just couldn’t manage to fall asleep, tossing and turning until he finally gave up. With a huff, he threw back the blankets and fumbled his way out of bed, cursing when his bare feet touched the chilly wooden floor. He found socks that he’d carelessly left on the floor at some point and wiggled them on before he headed downstairs for a glass of water or something.

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he noticed a soft flickering light coming from the sitting room, so he went to check it out. Steve was sitting on the floor, hunched over in front of the fireplace, a few logs burning meagerly.

“Hey Marley,” Tony called out to him as he entered the room. “Do you brood by the fire often? Is this a habit I just haven’t noticed?”

There was a long pause before Steve answered him. “It’s… cold.” His voice was so quiet, so… distant. Something wasn’t right.

“Steve?” There wasn’t an answer that time, so Tony quickly knelt by Steve’s side, concern flooding his thoughts.

The man was shivering, his arms wrapped tightly around himself. The usual chill Tony could feel whenever Steve was near him was downright frigid now, like ice seeping through the room. His lips looked like they were turning blue, and tiny crystals dotted Steve’s long eyelashes, as if ice were actually forming on them.

Not for the first time, Tony wished he could reach out and touch the man in front of him.

Instead, he jumped up from the floor and hastily added another log to the fire, stoking it to get the flames stronger. “Hey buddy, no - see how warm it is in here? You’re fine, Steve, hey, you’re okay.”

Steve didn’t respond, but when he looked up at Tony, his eyes looked so lost and so _broken_.

Nearly out of ideas, Tony rushed over to the couch and pulled the blanket from the back of it, then took a breath, hoping that this would work. He threw the blanket over Steve’s shoulders, and… it actually worked. The blanket didn’t just fall through him, instead, resting over his broad shoulders like a cape. Tony carefully arranged the blanket so that it was covering as much of Steve as it could, even pulling it up over his head like a makeshift hood.

Tony grabbed onto the blanket, hoping it would act as some sort of buffer so that he could actually touch Steve, and thankfully, unexplainable ghost physics were on his side in that moment. He pulled Steve against his chest, resting his cheek on top of the blanket pulled over Steve’s head. The iciness felt like it was seeping through the blanket, like that first morning when Steve walked through him, but a million times worse.

He lost track of how long they sat like that on the floor, Steve pulled tightly to his chest. At some point, the fire had faded to mere embers, but Tony stayed there, holding Steve until the shivering subsided and the color returned to his face.

Eventually, Tony felt Steve shift and lean away from him, so he let go. Steve peeked out from under the blanket, eyes locking onto Tony’s, and the emotion he found in them was overwhelming.

“Thank you.” His voice was no longer wavering, instead back to his usual surety.

“Don’t mention it.” Tony brushed it off, even as he could feel his heart lodging itself in his throat.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tony,” Pepper started. “I know you say you want to help him break whatever this— this curse is, but… are _you_ ready for him to move on?”
> 
> And that hit a little too close to the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented and left kudos on the first chapter! <3

A call from Pepper woke Tony up much earlier than he planned to be awake considering the kind of night he’d had. He fumbled around on the bedside table, struggling to find his phone as the ringtone was making his head pound. 

“I’ve got some good news, Tony.” Her voice was way too chipper for this hour of the day. Thankfully, she took his incoherent garble as a response.

“There’s an appraiser who can meet with you this week, and we possibly already have an interested buyer lined up.”

Finally his mind booted up and caught up with the conversation. And then promptly screeched to a stop.

“That’s… great, Pep,” he answered, definitely failing to mask his hesitation.

“You sound like you think it’s about as great as the time I surprised you with a board meeting.” She always could see right through him, even when she wasn’t even looking at him. “Did something happen?”

With a heavy sigh, Tony began explaining his concerns for Steve. Some thoughts had been plaguing him since the incident the night before, and now he was worried about what would become of the ghost if the inn was sold. What if the new owner tried to turn him into some sort of tourist attraction, or something like a specimen to be examined? There was a sinking feeling in Tony’s gut at the thought of Steve’s few days in the world every year being as torturous as wherever he was during the rest of the year.

He asked Pepper if she could possibly find a way to delay. There were still a few days left before Christmas Eve, and maybe he and Steve would be able to break the curse before then. Tony just couldn’t let this happen to him. He’d call the whole thing off and keep the damn place if it meant Steve could have those twelve days of peace every year. Hell, the stupid place could be a vacation home or something.

And because Pepper was a damn saint, she actually agreed to find a way to prolong the process.

“I’ll see what I can do to get the team to delay things.” 

“Pepper, I know I say this all the time, occasionally facetiously but most of the time genuinely, but you are the absolute best.” He let out a breath of air in relief. “Get yourself something nice from me for Christmas.”

Her laughter brought a grin to his face. “Oh, I already have, don’t worry.”

After getting off the phone with Pepper, Tony dragged himself out of bed and headed downstairs with the goal of injecting caffeine into his veins. Oh, and maybe finding Steve, too. He poked his head into the kitchen, but no one was in the room. He started to turn to go check Steve’s room but decided he should probably have some caffeine to prepare himself for whatever kind of conversation they were about to have.

Armed with a fresh cup of coffee, Tony found himself outside the door to Steve’s bedroom. He was about to knock on the door when it opened suddenly, almost causing him to lose his balance, but he recovered quickly without spilling a single drop of precious coffee.

“You’re up early,” Steve commented with a raised eyebrow. He was already dressed for the day, and Tony suddenly felt a bit inadequate in his pajamas. Or wait, ghosts don’t sleep, right? Does Steve even bother changing into pajamas then?

“Mm, Pepper woke me up for some business stuff.” Tony vaguely waved his hand through the air as he invited himself into the room. 

He hadn’t actually been inside this room yet, so he took a second to take it all in. It was fairly spartan with only a few personal effects here and there: a few sketchbooks among the books on a shelf, some framed photographs sitting on the desk. Presumably, the handsome, smirking brunet with his arm thrown around Steve’s shoulders in one of the photos must be Bucky (Steve’s _much slimmer_ shoulders, wow, he really had been tiny). After taking a moment to appreciate Steve’s bright smile in the photo, he turned back to Actual Steve, who was giving him a questioning look.

“Sure, come on in, Tony. Make yourself at home,” he drawled sarcastically, but Tony could see the hint of a smile hiding under Steve’s mock annoyance. Briefly, he wondered what it might take to get him to smile like he had in that photograph again.

“Don’t mind if I do.” Tony took a seat in an armchair that was near a small table in the corner of the room.

Well, time to address the frozen wooly mammoth in the room.

“So, uhh… does that happen often?” He asked, fiddling with his coffee mug that he’d set on the table.

A heavy sigh escaped Steve as he sat down on the edge of his bed, shoulders slumping as he ran a hand through his hair before answering. “It usually doesn’t, but I was… having a bad day. Sometimes it feels like I slip back… there. I catch bits and pieces of it occasionally; the cold, sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe.”

“I feel like I should apologize for my hand in that,” Tony offered, heart sinking at the idea that he had somehow pushed Steve to that point.

“No, it’s okay. I know I’m a stubborn ass, and I let my emotions get the best of me that day,” Steve waved it off easily, as if somehow reliving his death wasn’t that big of a deal. “Don’t blame yourself for it. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it can get.”

“Wow, Rogers, was that almost an apology?” Tony put his hand on his chest, faking shock.

Steve rolled his eyes fondly at his antics. “About as close to one as you might get right now.”

“I’ll take it.”

Figuring that the tone had changed enough to approach the subject, Tony decided to try asking about the incident with the art supplies in the attic. Surprisingly enough, Steve actually relented and began to explain how in all of the years that the curse had brought him back to the inn, he had never been able to touch his drawing set. Eventually, he‘d given up trying because every time his hand slipped through the cases, it stung just that much more.

“So… you can touch pretty much everything else in this house, that’s older than me at least, except for the things that matter to you the most? That’s pretty fucked, honestly,” commented Tony, a grimace screwing up his face.

Steve tried to feign nonchalance with a shrug, but Tony wasn’t buying it. Clearly losing his art was a big deal to him if the incident in the attic had possibly triggered his little trip back to the ice.

“Are those sketchbooks yours, too?” Tony asked, pointing towards the ones he had spotted on the shelf. Steve nodded. “...would it be alright if I looked at them?” 

Tony noticed Steve tense for a moment, but it only lasted a moment before he nodded again. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

It took him a second to react to Steve’s response because he honestly hadn’t expected for Steve to say yes. Once his brain processed what Steve had said, Tony hopped up out of the chair and hustled to the shelf in case the man suddenly had a change of heart. Holy shit, wasn’t this like, the ultimate trust of an artist? Tony definitely didn’t let just anyone into his workshop, so he tried his best to not let Steve’s approval go to his head.

He brushed his hands off on his pajama pants, just in case there was anything on them, before he reached up and pulled one off the shelf, handling it with the utmost care since the sketchbooks were so old. The pages weren’t as yellowed as Tony had expected, so someone must have kept them in storage, maybe bringing them out whenever it was time for Steve to show up in December every year. Probably Coulson, Tony suspected.

As he gingerly turned back the cover, Tony heard the bed creak as Steve stood up and came to stand next to him, watching over his shoulder with a melancholic smile. It dawned on him that Steve probably hadn’t seen his own drawings in… _decades_. Damn.

He was amazed as he flipped through the pages, taking in the drawings and sketches that adorned the paper. There were mostly life studies, portraits of various people who must have been Steve’s friends or family. He recognized Bucky among the sketches, and there was a fair-haired woman who Tony could only guess was his mother, judging by her features. He thought he might’ve seen a photo of her among the ones in the hallway, too.

“Holy shit, Steve. I don’t really know much about art, but I can recognize skill when I see it.” The man ducked his head shyly at Tony’s praise, and god _damn_ he was too cute. Tony pointed a sketch of the woman. “Is this your mom?”

“Yeah, that’s her. It was always hard to get her to sit still long enough to do a decent portrait, but she let me do more after she got sick.” Steve’s voice was doing that faraway thing it did sometimes, but when Tony looked up at Steve, he didn’t have that lost look in his eyes. There was adoration there instead as the man smiled down at his mother on the paper. 

“There wasn’t a whole lot I could really do when I was young, couldn’t go outside as much as the other kids on account of bein’ sick all the time ‘n all. So I ended up drawing a lot. It was a nice way to escape even when I couldn’t go anywhere.” Tony had noticed that any time Steve started reminiscing about his childhood, traces of Brooklyn would start to come through in his accent, and he absolutely loved it. Steve probably wasn’t even aware it was something he did.

“I was plannin’ on going to art school before Ma got sick,” Steve continued explaining. “But even if she hadn’t, the war woulda kept me from going anyway. I think Ma blamed herself a bit, but I never held it against her.”

He noticed that Steve seemed a little hesitant, he hadn’t made any sort of movement like he was going to reach out for the sketchbook. “Have you tried touching them recently?”

Steve cleared his throat. “I did the other night… didn’t go too well.”

“Ah,” Tony said. “Well… maybe you should try again sometime? Not now, probably not even today, but just if you feel like it? Maybe something will have changed.” Steve seemed apprehensive, so Tony didn’t want to push him to try right then.

“Thank you... for this.” Steve vaguely gestured, probably trying to convey that he meant more than just looking through his old artwork. “Even after I’ve been a complete ass, you’ve kept reaching out to me.”

“Yeah, well, even if you can be a bit of an ass, you’re at least self-aware about it.” Tony’s mouth suddenly felt very dry, and he closed the sketchbook before setting it down on the desk. “But you don’t deserve whatever this is— being stuck here.”

“I probably haven’t been going about things the best way either. This isn’t some sort of equation to solve, or some sort of treasure hunt with a chest of gold or some shit to find at the end, it’s your life.” He stopped for a moment, thinking. “ _Was_ your life? How do you feel about verb tenses?”

“I think…” It took Steve a second to find his words. “It still is my life. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like I died, but then something will happen that reminds me, and I don’t always react too well.”

Tony looked at Steve and was met with the whirl of emotions flickering in his blue eyes. “Promise me you’ll try again before you leave?”

Steve nodded, something that looked a lot like determination finding its way to the surface. “I promise.”

———

It seemed like they had pretty much run out of things to investigate, though Tony figured later he might look over the newspapers again, just in case he had missed anything. There was only a handful of days remaining until Christmas Eve, and it felt like they were quickly running out of time to break the curse on Steve.

But after the whole thing with the ice and then the sketchbooks, Tony was starting to want to just spend more with Steve. He knew it was probably a bit selfish of him, but he couldn’t help it. With every little bit that he learned about the man, Tony wanted to know more. And hey, maybe getting to know him could be a way to break the curse? Like some Dr. Phil emotional journey or something. At that point it probably wouldn’t hurt to try, at least.

He was kinda out of ideas, aside from calling in an “expert,” and that really… really was not something Tony wanted to do. He didn’t want anyone poking and prodding at Steve and his life recklessly (he had already seen what his own slight carelessness had done). Steve had managed to come out of it that time, but Tony didn't want to take any chances as their deadline loomed.

Steve had seemed a little different since their conversation that morning, too. He wasn’t holding himself as stiffly as before, like the tension had faded from his shoulders. He was also starting to relax more around Tony and show what was apparently his true self — a smartass with the driest sense of humor. Tony was absolutely living for it.

They had dinner together again that night. It wasn’t like Tony specifically planned to be in the kitchen around the same time that he had noticed Steve liked to eat. It was completely and entirely coincidental.

When Tony sat down at the table across from Steve, the man looked up and shot him a grin. “Did you clean my stuff? I found it in the study earlier.”

Tony’s brain skidded to a halt. He honestly hadn’t thought of what to say if Steve brought up the fact that he had cleaned the cases and easel. When it started moving again, he decided to attempt nonchalance. “Me? Nah, I wouldn’t know what to do with cleaning shit— had a butler growing up.”

“Oh.” Steve said, smile turning wry. “Well, that was very kind of whoever did it. Maybe it was Coulson, I should thank him when he drops by again.” The tone of Steve’s voice told Tony that he knew exactly who had cleaned it.

“I don’t think he’d want you to make a big deal of it,” Tony commented, ignoring the pounding of his heart and pushing his food around his plate with his fork so that he didn’t have to make eye contact with Steve.

Thankfully, Steve left it at that, instead choosing to change the topic of conversation. “Ya know, you were right about Buck. He’d kick my ass if he caught me blaming myself for his death.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. Can you repeat that first part?” Tony held his hand up to stop Steve and gave him a crooked grin. “I need to get ‘Tony, you were right’ on recording, I wanna set it as my ringtone.”

Steve let out a laugh at Tony’s silliness, his eyes twinkling with amusement. “That’s not even what I said.”

“You just don’t want me to use it against you in the future,” griped Tony.

“Speaking of the future…” Steve’s expression changed, becoming more reserved, as if he were actually going to be cautious with his next words. Of course, because they couldn’t get through a single conversation without one of them ruining the mood, Steve’s next words were: “Why are you selling the inn? Surely you of all people don’t need the money.”

For some reason, Tony immediately felt his defenses go up reflexively. “Did you finally do your homework on me?” He asked, playfulness gone from his voice.

“I asked Coulson about you the other day.” _Figures._

Tony dragged his hands down his face and huffed a sigh. “Okay, so, long story short. My uncle-figure was dealing under the table to terrorists, and he tried to have me killed when I found out. Thankfully, it didn’t stick.” Surprised blue eyes were staring back at him as Steve listened intently.

“I closed down the weapons division of the company, decided to focus on green energy and biotech— prosthetics, that kinda stuff, but we’re taking a massive hit for it. Much bigger than Pepper and I had calculated, so we’re trimming down any and all excess things to try to prevent layoffs. Ya know, liquidate anything unnecessary to help cushion the blow. For some reason, this is actually a Stark Industries property.”

“And this just so happens to be an easy loose end to cut,” Steve added, sounding relatively calm, which surprised Tony a bit.

“Well,” Tony gave a humourless laugh. “I wouldn’t really call it _‘easy,’_ all things considered. But essentially, yeah.”

“But it’s necessary?”

… _Was_ it necessary? Tony didn’t really know anymore. He probably should have looked at the numbers closer before agreeing to this whole thing, but he hadn’t wanted to even deal with it in the first place. He really was bad about that, not wanting to deal with all the boring business and numbers side of S.I., just burying himself in his workshop and only surfacing when Pepper forced him. That was what landed them here in the first place.

Steve, who apparently had a talent for putting Tony at a loss for words, chimed in again. “To be honest, I don’t really have much of a personal connection to this place.” Tony couldn’t hold back a laugh at that, considering the man was literally tied to the inn through a curse. Steve gave him a small smile. “I mean it. All I did was help out my aunt around the place for the few years Ma and I lived here. It’s not like I grew up here or anything sentimental like that.”

“I feel like there’s some irony there.”

“Probably.” There was a hint of ruefulness in his expression, his brow furrowed. Tony wanted to reach out to Steve and gently smooth out the lines.

Tony felt as if he desperately needed to change the subject to salvage the easygoing mood from a few minutes before. Things had been going a lot better with Steve since that morning, and he really didn’t want to fuck that up like he usually did with good things (and just when did he start to think of Steve as a good thing? Oh man, Pepper was gonna kick his ass).

“What did you and your mother used to do for Christmas?” Tony asked, hoping it would work.

Steve relaxed a bit at the change of subject, settling back in his chair. “Well, we never did a whole lot because we didn’t really have the money. Not that it mattered to me. Having time with Ma when she’d get off work was always the best part.” His smile had taken on a wistful feeling. “She always made sure I had a present to unwrap, even if it was just an orange. Sometimes she’d manage to get me a new book, though.”

Listening to Steve recount his childhood made Tony feel strangely guilty. He had always had whatever material possessions he could have ever wanted, but the one thing that was always missing during Christmas was his parents. He would have gladly traded it all to just be with his mother for the holiday.

“When we moved here, my aunt always had a tree decorated for any guests that stayed around Christmastime. Ma and I had never gotten one to decorate after Da passed, but I helped with the one here.”

“What about your family?” Steve asked him.

Tony let out a derisive snort as he thought back to his childhood Christmases, or lack thereof. “We uh… we never really did much as a family when I was growing up. Howard was always busy with the company, and Mom always seemed to have a reason to be out of the house.”

Steve frowned, as if personally insulted by the lack of happy childhood memories Tony had to share, or maybe he could sense Tony’s contempt towards his father.

What a pair the two of them were. Steve’s memories could practically be something straight out of _A Christmas Carol_ , a loving family that had nothing but each other, meanwhile Tony’s childhood had everything _but_ love. It would have been nice if they’d both had experiences somewhere in the middle of those extremes… maybe there was something Tony could do about that this year, at least.

———

He used his foot to kick open the front door of the inn, hands too busy helping to wrangle the tree across the snowy yard. His shoes were soaked through, he was covered in prickly, little pine needles, and he was starting to deeply regret picking out such a large tree at the lot in town.

“What room are we taking it to, Mr. Stark?” Coulson’s voice was steady. Clearly someone else wasn’t having as much trouble as Tony was.

“Sitting room,” Tony huffed out, scrambling to reposition his hold on the trunk of the tree as they squeezed it through the doorway.

They managed to maneuver the tree through the hallway with little to no collateral damage (no one was going to miss that potted plant) and quickly set the tree in the awaiting stand in the corner of the sitting room. Coulson untied it and started fluffing out the branches, needles scattering across the wooden floor.

Tony had collapsed onto the nearest couch as soon as the tree was stable. “Think I found my New Year’s resolution: no carrying trees, of any sort.”

“Might be hard, but I think you can probably stick to it,” commented Coulson, the corner of his mouth ticked up in a small smile. Tony groaned when the pun dawned on him. “It’s been a while since we’ve had a tree at the inn. I’ll go get the boxes of ornaments; they’re probably buried so deep in the attic it’d take you all day to find them yourself.”

He murmured a thanks as Coulson left the room. For a moment, Tony just laid there on the couch, but then the chilly dampness of his wet socks became too much to ignore any longer. On his way to his room, Tony kicked his wet shoes off by the door and trudged up the stairs, frowning at the wetness around the ankles of his pants. Damn town and its damn North Pole weather. The second Tony had stepped out of the car, his feet had sank straight through like six inches of snow.

Once Tony had changed out of his damp clothes, he gave himself a once-over in the mirror to make sure he’d gotten all the pine needles out of his hair— absolutely not because he wanted to look good in front of Steve. He picked out the last few stragglers and deemed himself presentable.

He hurried down the stairs and when he didn’t find Steve in the kitchen, he went straight to the man’s room, calling his name as he opened the door. And if Tony wasn’t really thinking when he barged into the room without knocking… then his mind went _really_ blank when he was greeted with the sight of a shirtless Steve ironing his clothes.

“Is knocking not a thing anymore?” Steve joked as he looked over his shoulder (oh god, his glorious, completely bare shoulder), and Tony thought he caught Steve smirking at him. To be fair, Tony was stopped dead in his tracks, probably with his mouth hanging open. He should close that, maybe. Or try to say something at least.

“Tree.” Good, smart. Excellent words, Tony.

“What?” Steve gave him a confused look. He tried to ignore the way his thoughts were drifting towards how very much he would like to climb Steve like a tree.

“I got a tree.”

“...You got a tree,” Steve repeated slowly, as if it’d make more sense.

Thankfully, his words finally started working again, and he cleared his throat. “Yeah, I went into town and got a tree, you know, to decorate. So put on some clothes and come help me with it. Or not, we can do shirtless tree decorating, too, though it might be a bit prickly.”

“Sure,” the man answered hesitantly, like he was still trying to figure out what the hell was happening.

“Right, okay. I’m just gonna—“ Tony left the room before he said anything weirder than he already had.

Did ghost clothes even get wrinkled? Or was he wearing stuff that existed in the real world? Cursed ghost physics were weird.

While he was waiting for Steve, Tony went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee to warm up from the chill of being outside in the snow for so long earlier. Though after what he saw in Steve’s bedroom, maybe a cold shower would have been a better idea.

Back in the sitting room, he found plastic totes of ornaments stacked near the tree. Tony peeked out the window, but he didn’t see Coulson’s truck, so he must have left while Tony was talking to Steve. Which, really, was fine by him because he didn’t particularly want a third wheel during the tree decorating. Phil must’ve gathered from their conversation at the tree lot that Tony was doing this all for Steve.

“That sure is a tree.” Steve’s eyes went wide when he entered the room finally.

“Told you it was.”

“Did you get the biggest one on the lot?”

 _Maybe._ “No.” Tony lied, taking a gulp of coffee. “I didn’t want to hear any overcompensation jokes.” 

“You? Surely not.” Steve shot him a sly grin, and Tony felt his cheeks heat a little at that. Oh boy, this had the potential to be dangerous.

Tony set down his coffee on a nearby table and started to sort through the ornaments. Then, he grabbed one and suddenly tossed it at Steve, who thankfully was able to catch it, though it earned him a stern look from the ghost. For some reason, Tony found poking fun at Steve to be incredibly enjoyable.

“Just testing my hypothesis again,” explained Tony as Steve shook his head at him.

“So when was the last time you decorated a tree? The forties? Did they still use actual burning candles back then?” Tony asked jokingly as he handed another ornament to Steve carefully. The man didn’t get annoyed by Tony’s jokes as much anymore, instead just smiling at him exasperatedly, and it was doing funny things to Tony’s heart.

It was still a little weird whenever their hands made contact, or rather… didn’t make contact. Although it wasn’t nearly as cold as that night Tony had found him in front of the fireplace, it was an unwelcome reminder of Steve’s circumstances, so Tony tried to hand him the ornaments in a way that kept it from happening.

“When was the last time _you_ decorated a tree?” Steve turned the question back at him, tone playful.

Tony actually had to think about it. “...Probably not since I was a little kid. My parents weren’t really big on the whole Christmas thing. Usually it was just company parties and wining and dining clients and whatnot.” 

“Jarvis, our butler, was always the one who put up a tree, but I went to boarding school, so most of the time I wasn’t there when he did it.” Wow, that sounded sad. Steve was definitely frowning now, and Tony thought it was endearing that the man seemed to be upset for him. “Don’t worry, Coulson swung by earlier and helped me pick out the tree. There was no way that was gonna fit on top of the Audi.”

“Tony…” Steve started, his voice and gaze going soft. “This was very thoughtful of you. It’s been… a really long time since I’ve been able to do anything like this.”

“I’m sure you’d much rather be at home doing this with your girl,” he threw in at the end, looking away from Tony to instead fixate on an ornament that didn’t even need repositioning. Wait, what?

“Huh? My what?” He cocked his head questioningly at Steve, but then he realized what the man had meant. “Oh! Pepper. Oh, no. No, she’s not my girlfriend. I mean, she’s the most amazing woman I know, and I love her, but she’s one of my best friends. And my personal assistant, though I keep telling her that she should be CEO instead of me.”

“Actually, I did try asking her out years ago,” Tony laughed, remembering it fondly. “She printed out the company’s sexual harassment policies and left it on my desk the next morning.”

He cleared his throat awkwardly, suddenly a lot more self-conscious than he had been moments before. “I’m uh, single, actually. Not seeing anyone these days, uhh, man or woman, or anyone really.”

“ _Oh._ ” Steve’s cheeks were turning a bright red as he understood what Tony meant. “Oh, that’s… not illegal anymore? That’s great.”

“It sure is great,” Tony agreed, way too amused at the way Steve was blushing and pointedly not making eye contact with him. The man hadn’t tensed up, and he hadn’t rushed to put any distance between them, so Tony figured he could take that as a good sign.

“Pep could do way better than me anyway. I’m kind of a piping hot mess a lot of the time.” He shrugged.

Finally, Steve met his eyes again, a determined look in them despite the blush that still tinged his cheeks. “Tony, anyone would be lucky to have you.”

Tony ducked his head and pretended to be extremely interested in the box of ornaments in his hands. “Most people just find me to be… a lot.”

“And that’s supposed to be a bad thing?” Steve raised an eyebrow at him. “I’ve only known you for a little over a week, and you’ve already done so much to try and help me. From what you’ve told me, it sounds like you really care about how your decisions impact others, too.”

“People who care that much are rare.” His face softened, and Tony didn’t feel like he had really done anything that made him worthy of receiving that look from Steve. “Sometimes ‘a lot’ is a good thing.”

Wanting to no longer be the subject of conversation, Tony directed a question towards Steve. “Did you have anyone before…?” He trailed off, finding himself a bit uncomfortable with acknowledging Steve’s death the closer he became with the man.

“Nah,” Steve shook his head, the corners of his mouth turning down. “Dames used to look right past me. When Bucky would drag me out on double dates, he’d always end up with both girls not even halfway through.” At that he gave a small chuckle, at least.

“And well...” He shifted his weight back and forth for a second, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck before he continued. “With it being illegal and all, there weren’t really a whole lotta guys who would take their chances just to be with me.”

Oh. That’s… _oh._

Steve looked downright nervous, even though Tony had literally admitted his own sexuality just minutes before. Tony hated that the world had ever made Steve have to hide that part of himself.

“You would have been absolutely worth it.” He found that he truly meant it.

He got a bashful smile from Steve in response to that, but then Steve waved it off. “A guy like you wouldn’t have given me a second look back then.”

“Uh, wow, okay. I’m hurt by that accusation, Steve. One, false. Two, what happened to all those nice things you were saying about me earlier? You think I’m the kind to _only_ care about looks?” He gaped at the man incredulously.

“Looks are just a bonus. Nice packaging. They don’t matter if you unwrap it and find a pile of shit inside.” He saw Steve laugh at that and couldn’t help but smile, too. “Anyway, I’ve seen the old photos. You may have hit a growth spurt, but it didn’t magically make you handsome overnight or something. That was already there.”

“It’s not your fault that people just didn’t care or notice, or whatever their fucking excuse was. Dumbasses, all of them. They have no clue what they missed.”

By the time he was finished, Steve’s cheeks were a lovely shade of red, and it had crept up to the tips of his ears. Yeah, looks didn’t matter to Tony anymore, but god… Steve was cute. What the hell did he mean by ‘a guy like you’ anyway? Did he… find Tony attractive? Oh shit. 

A silence had fallen over them as Steve appeared to be combusting thanks to Tony’s compliments, so he decided to fill it with the first thought that came to mind.

“Hey, you know, not only is it not illegal anymore— same sex marriage is actually _legal_ in the U.S. now.” He figured Steve probably didn’t get the news in the afterlife.

Steve gaped at Tony. “Wow… I never thought that was something that could ever happen.” There was an awed smile on the man’s face, but an underlying sadness in his eyes. Tony wondered if Steve had ever loved anyone… Sometimes he forgot that the person in front of him had died so young, deceived by the weariness with which he usually carried himself.

Tony couldn’t stop watching Steve as they finished decorating the tree, occasionally catching Steve watching him, too, and he had a distinct feeling that this could end poorly… for both of them.

After trimming the tree, the two of them spent the rest of the day just kinda near each other. Tony had some S.I. stuff to look over before the holidays truly kicked in, and Steve settled down in the same room, reading one of his dog-eared books. Briefly, Tony thought about getting him a new one, but he probably wouldn’t even be able to touch it. Would finding an old copy in nice condition work?

Occasionally, he caught Steve sneaking glances at him, and it was hard to keep from laughing at him. He wasn’t doing a very good job of being subtle, but then again, Tony probably wasn’t either. It was kind of hard to focus on the work Pepper had sent him when Steve was right there. Though it was pleasant to just… sit together, stealing glances in whatever this was that they definitely weren’t addressing. Tony wasn’t sure when the last time he ever simply spent time with someone was before Steve.

Finally, Tony caught a glimpse of the worn book’s title. Oh, Steve was reading _The Hobbit_. Of course he was a nerd, too.

“Hey, did you know they made movies for the other books?”

Steve looked up from the page, eyes wide. “There’s other books?”

Quickly, Tony grabbed his phone and searched for when _the Lord of the Rings_ was released. “...Oh my _god._ 1954.”

“There’s other books?!” Steve repeated his question, his voice tinged with something that sounded like a mix of excitement and urgency.

Tony couldn’t hold back a laugh at the face Steve was making. “Oh man, I’ve got so much to catch you up on.” But his smile quickly faded when it dawned on him that he couldn’t really do that. There wasn’t a future here. Well, not for Steve at least.

And that just… really fucking sucked. Tony wished they could have met under different circumstances somehow. Maybe then they would have had a chance to be together.

———

The next morning, Tony was very groggily standing in front of the coffee maker, waiting for it to dispense the nectar of the gods that would help him get through another day when Steve surprised him by suddenly appearing by his side. Well, he didn’t really just _appear_ out of nowhere; he probably walked in like a normal person, but Tony was just not capable of processing his surroundings yet.

“ _Jesus!_ ” Tony exclaimed, clutching his chest. “We’ve gotta put a bell on you or something.”

The way Steve’s eye crinkled when he smiled at him entirely too fondly had Tony’s world going sideways, and god, he needed coffee, and he needed it five minutes ago because he cannot deal with whatever Steve was trying to hand him. Wait, Steve was trying to hand him something.

Slowly, Tony took the piece of paper from Steve and stared at it. It felt like the same type of paper that was in Steve’s old sketchbooks, and there was a drawing of a Christmas tree on it. It looked a lot like the tree they’d decorated the day before…

Tony’s head jerked up when the realization hit him, and he looked up at Steve, who had an absolutely blinding smile on his face. _Whoa there, Sun, that’s too bright._

“You drew this…” Steve quickly nodded at him, looking like he was about to overflow with giddiness. “This is incredible, Steve.”

“Wait, oh my god. You _drew_ this.” Suddenly Tony latched onto Steve’s wrist, like it’d help him stabilize his thoughts. He was really slow on the uptake this morning. 

The smile disappeared from Steve’s face as he slowly looked down at Tony’s hand on his wrist. Oops. Maybe he wasn’t much of a touchy-feely kind of person, and admittedly sometimes Tony was a bit too touchy. Tony was about to apologize when it registered in his caffeine-deprived brain that he was holding Steve’s wrist.

“Well, that’s new,” Steve said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper.

He wasn’t exactly warm, but Steve no longer had the slight chill emanating from him like Tony had come to expect. He felt like he needed to pinch himself in case he was still dreaming, or maybe pinch Steve instead. The man furrowed his brow and looked annoyed when he did it.

“Do you think…?” He asked, searching Steve’s eyes like the answer would somehow be in their clear blue depths.

“We could test it.” Steve nodded in the general direction of the gate.

Without another word, Tony rushed out of the kitchen, coffee now forgotten, dragging Steve by the wrist. He managed to wiggle into his shoes without letting go of Steve but thought ‘screw it’ when he looked at his coat.

Part of him was almost afraid to let go, but it seemed like Steve didn’t want him to either.

When they reached the gate at the property line, Steve took a step in front of Tony and turned to face him, mere inches away from the invisible boundary the curse had created. There was so much hope in his eyes, and Tony’s heart felt like it was going to pound straight out of his chest. Finally, he released Steve’s wrist, and the man took the final step backwards.

...and then disappeared.

For a brief moment, Tony was terrified (though wasn’t it supposed to be a good thing if Steve crossed over?), but then he whipped around and saw Steve on the porch of the house, face ashen.

Tony’s heart plummeted.

It was like time had frozen as they stared at each other across the yard, both at a loss for words. A sudden gust of wind not so gently reminded Tony that he had ran outside without his coat on, so he slowly made his way back across the yard. Steve hadn’t so much as moved from his spot in the doorway, and Tony hesitantly reached out to him, overwhelmingly grateful when he found he could still touch him. Gently, Tony pulled the taller man down into a hug, whispering an apology as Steve buried his face in the crook of Tony’s neck.

He felt arms wrap around his back as Steve clung to him, not saying anything.

When they separated after a while, Steve murmured something about going to his room, so Tony went back to his own and immediately grabbed his phone to call Pepper. He worried about leaving Steve by himself after what had happened, but there was something important he had to take care of immediately.

“Pep,” his voice was breaking and betraying his emotions to her. “Call the sale off. I’m not going through with it.”

“Uh, hello to you, too, Tony? Is everything alright? You sound terrible.” Pepper asked, sounding concerned.

“I can’t do this to him. There’s gotta be another solution to this.”

“Okay, slow down.” She interrupted him. “What happened?”

“The curse, I— I can’t fix this, Pepper. I’ve tried everything I can think of, and he’s still...” Tony trailed off.

“You’ve gotten a bit fond of him, haven’t you?” Her tone was soft, lacking judgement of any kind.

It was never any use trying to lie to Pepper. “A little,” he confessed with a sniffle. “I just… I thought we’d made a lot of progress, and we _have_. Steve wasn’t able to use his drawing stuff and now he _can_. And like, that had to be a good sign, right? But then—“

“Tony,” she started. “I know you say you want to help him break whatever this— this curse is, but… are _you_ ready for him to move on?”

And that hit a little too close to the truth. 

When he didn’t answer her, she continued. “I’ll see what I can do about things here on my end, but can you do me a favor?”

“Depends,” he tried to joke, but it was hard to put the humor into it.

“Don’t let yourself fall for someone who can’t love you back the way you deserve.”

“It might be a little too late for that,” he admitted, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth. He knew she was right, but there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it now.

“I’m just worried about you, okay? I’m here if you need me, Tony.”

“...Thanks, Pep.”

When Tony saw Steve again that night, he very pointedly did not bring up what had happened at the gate earlier. Whatever it was that he was feeling right then, he’d bottled it up and wasn’t sharing a drop of it with Tony.

Meanwhile, Tony couldn’t stop trying to piece together why the hell they hadn’t been able to break the curse yet. Steve was a bit quiet the rest of the day, but he kept drawing and somehow didn’t seem to be as weighed down by everything anymore. He couldn’t tell if Steve had just given up, or if this was his way of coping with it. He didn’t seem as tense and quick to anger as he had in those first few days, and he’d come to terms with his (needless) guilt over his best friend’s death… so what the hell was keeping him here?

When he went to bed that night, Tony laid awake for hours, knowing that there had to be more that he could do.

———

Things were relatively… normal after that. Well, at least Steve was acting like they were.

Tony wasn’t.

There were less than forty-eight hours remaining until the curse would whisk Steve away until next year, and quite frankly, it was stressing Tony the fuck out. He’d found the man drawing in the study, nestled in an armchair near the window with his sketchbook propped on his knee.

When Tony commented on how much Steve had been drawing lately, he’d replied wryly, “Trying to make up for lost time.”

Time, that wasn’t something that they had much of. Tomorrow could very well be his last day with Steve… unless he came back to the inn the next year.

Hoping to find something— absolutely anything— that he may have overlooked before, Tony started to sort through the newspapers again, combing over the articles carefully for any trace of something that might have been related to Steve. He’d honestly lost track of time when Steve surprised him by gently taking the paper out of his hand and setting it on the table.

“Tony.” His beautiful blue eyes were bright with affection, and Tony started to lose himself in them. “I’ve been trying to get your attention for the past ten minutes.”

“Oh,” Tony said, dumbly.

“You can stop now,” Steve told him as he took Tony’s hand in his. “You’ve done more than enough for me.”

“But—“

Steve ignored his attempted interruption. “Everything you’ve done… you’ve given me back more than I could ever have imagined. I know you’re worried about me.” He swallowed thickly before continuing, obviously pushing down emotions threatening to spill over. “I’ll be able to manage.”

“Steve, no, you deserve so much more than just _’managing_ ,’” argued Tony.

There was a pause before Steve spoke again. “Right now, breaking the curse honestly isn’t the most important thing to me.” He smiled shyly before saying, “If you don’t mind, I’d much rather just enjoy the rest of my time here… with you.”

Tony had to replay that last part a few times. “You’re about to disappear back into some frozen hell purgatory thing, and instead of trying to stop it, you just want to spend time with… _me._ ”

“Yep, I believe that’s what I said.”

Tony gripped Steve’s hand back, thankful for at least being able to do that. “Can’t say I quite understand your reasoning, but yeah, sure.”

“Don’t sell yourself so short.” Steve’s smile was so _soft_ , and he was looking at Tony from under those pretty eyelashes, and it hit him that he was so beyond incredibly gone for this man.

“Anyway… I wanna bake some cookies.” Steve gave Tony’s hand one last squeeze before letting go.

“What?” Tony wasn’t sure what had prompted that.

“Come on, it’s almost Christmas, and I’m pretty sure I can finally touch the cookie sheet now.”

“Steve, what the hell made you think this was a good idea?” Tony asked, covered in flour.

“I’ve seen you cook! I didn’t think you’d be this bad.” Steve hid a laugh with the back of his hand. “It’s not even that hard.”

“Mhm, yeah, no, baking and cooking are definitely two entirely different things.”

“Not really.” The blond made that cute scrunchy face at Tony, and he had to physically resist the urge to pinch his cheeks or something. Tony flicked some flour at him instead, a light dusting of it stuck to Steve’s shirt.

“Okay, okay,” he said with a laugh, and Tony briefly considered recording the sound somehow, just so he could listen to it forever. "You can be my assistant then.”

“Truly an honor,” Tony drawled sarcastically.

Steve took over on mixing the cookie dough, and he started telling Tony about how he learned to bake while helping out at the inn around Christmastime, how his mother had taught him family recipes when she was feeling well enough. Tony loved the look he always got whenever he talked about his mother, though sometimes he felt a little bittersweet when it reminded him of the warmth his own childhood had lacked.

When it came time to knead the dough (apparently that was a thing that had to be done with gingerbread, Tony was learning), Steve rolled up his sleeves, and Tony did his absolute best to not drool over the man’s forearms. It was… quite a sight. Steve shot him an amused look when he noticed that Tony hadn’t been able to pull his eyes away.

“I’m just… learning by observation.” Tony tried to make an excuse for his blatant appreciation of Steve’s arms.

“Sure you are,” Steve teased him, but Tony could tell he was enjoying the attention from the was he was practically preening.

Once the cookies cooled off, decorating didn’t go much better for Tony, despite having steady hands from all of the soldering and detail work he was used to doing on his projects. They were all turning out a little… wonky. Steve’s, of course, were all perfect, though he hadn’t really expected any less from the artist.

“Look! It’s you!” He exclaimed excitedly presenting Tony with the gingerbread man he’d just finished icing. The little cookie had his trademark goatee and Tony tried to not get choked up at the sight of Steve adorably beaming about his cookie mini-me.

“I’m not eating that one— he’s too cute.”

“Well, I might,” Steve added with a smirk.

He didn’t think Steve noticed the way Tony’s jaw dropped at that remark.

Tony channeled his shock into pure determination to create his own Steve gingerbread man. Thankfully, they’d mixed up some yellow icing to use for the star-shaped cookies, so Tony carefully squeezed some onto a cookie, trying to replicate Steve’s swoopy hairstyle. He had just finished the gingerbread man’s pants when he felt Steve rest his chin on his shoulder to watch.

“Is that one me?” he asked, deep voice sending vibrations through Tony in a way that had him suppressing a shiver.

“Of course it is,” Tony answered matter-of-factly.

“Where’s his shirt?”

“He’s allergic to them. It’s quite tragic.” 

Steve pulled away suddenly, large frame shaking with laughter, and Tony wished for probably the fifth time that evening that he could ask mobile JARVIS to record Steve’s laugh on his phone without it being weird and ruining the mood probably.

At some point while they were icing the cookies, the two men had devolved into randomly smearing the colorful icing on whatever part of each other they could reach. It was becoming something of a competition to see who could one-up the other. There were smudges of icing all across their faces; Tony could feel some of it drying in his facial hair, but he had retaliated for that one with a nice red glob on Steve’s cheek. At one point, they had pretty much forgotten about icing the gingerbread cookies entirely, and it had turned into some sort of playful tussling match. 

They had found themselves in a stalemate; Tony almost had managed to wiggle through to smear more icing across Steve’s face, but the man’s muscles were definitely not just for show. He’d managed to hold Tony back for a while, but they’d somehow become twisted together, faces close with Tony’s right arm trapped between them.

And wow, they were… yeah, they were really close.

So close Tony could just… lean in to close the gap and kiss Steve.

Steve, who was apparently having similar thoughts, as Tony watched Steve’s gaze dart down to his mouth and the way the man almost seemed to lean in just a fraction closer.

It felt like the world around the two of them had slowed to a stop…

And Tony saw an opening.

He pushed forward and landed a massive glob of bright blue icing across Steve’s chin and bottom lip. Immediately, Steve let go of Tony and jolted a step backwards.

“Ha! I won!” Tony whooped, grinning excitedly. Steve, on the other hand, was actually _pouting_ at him, and it felt like he’d accidentally kicked a puppy.

“Aw, come here, sore loser. I’ll get it off,” Tony offered, holding out his icing-free hand. Steve eyed him cautiously before stepping closer to him, probably trying to gauge if Tony was plotting against him.

Slowly, Tony took Steve’s chin in his hand and wiped some of the icing off, dragging his thumb across the man’s plush bottom lip (to obviously get as much of the icing off as possible, _duh_ ). A deep blush quickly spread across Steve’s cheeks, and his mouth fell open just the slightest. Then, Tony licked the icing off his thumb with what he hoped was a seductive look, and he was absolutely thrilled when he could _see_ Steve’s brain short-circuit.

“That better?” He asked, giving Steve a sly smirk.

“Y-yeah,” Steve managed to croak out, face beet red.

After they finished with the clean up, Steve stopped Tony as they were about to part for the night at the bottom of the stairs. He shifted back and forth on his feet as he seemed to be looking for the right words.

“I’d like to do something special for you tomorrow…” Steve seemed kinda nervous, in that cute, shy way of his. “How’s dinner sound?”

Tony leaned against the bannister of the stairs and smiled warmly at Steve. “Dinner sounds fantastic.”

Part of him couldn’t help but still think that they should be using their last remaining hours together in a final attempt to break the curse, but if this was what Steve said he wanted, then who was Tony to deny him of that? Though… it might have been a tiny bit selfish of himself to think that not breaking the curse meant he could possibly see Steve again the next year. He had been pushing that thought to the back of his mind the last few days, but the more time Tony spent with Steve, the more time he wished they had together.

It… wasn’t selfish if it was what they both wanted, right?

...Right?

———

When Tony woke up the next morning, his heart felt a bit heavier knowing it was almost the end. Or kind of the end, at least. The feeling of loss was already beginning to creep into his chest, so he quickly got out of bed and padded down the stairs to look for Steve.

He found him in the kitchen, finishing up breakfast because, as Tony had come to notice, Steve was a morning person. Like, the kind of morning person who probably got up every morning and went jogging for _fun_. Tony shuddered.

“Yeah, I used to go on morning runs a lot, but it’s a little harder with all the snow.” Steve chuckled. Apparently Tony had said some of that out loud.

Steve placed a cup of coffee on the table in front of Tony, and he clung to it like a life preserver, inhaling the scent before downing a few gulps. When he blearily blinked the remaining sleep out of his eyes, Steve was just watching him with the barest hint of a smile on his face.

The man didn’t let any details about his plans for dinner slip while they were eating breakfast, despite Tony’s many attempts at prying for information. Afterwards, he shooed Tony out of the kitchen, leaving him to his own devices while Steve worked on... whatever he was plotting.

There wasn’t anything to look over for S.I., so Tony wasted an indeterminate amount of time looking at cat memes to cheer himself up. He sent a few of his favorites to Rhodey, who replied with the classic “hang in there” motivational cat. Briefly, he considered calling his best friend, but thought better of it, not wanting to get all emotional on Rhodey. He’d save that call for tomorrow when he’d really need it.

Around lunchtime, Tony tried to get into the kitchen, but Steve met him in the doorway, handed him a sandwich, and then turned him away. Not one to look a gift sandwich in the mouth (or crust, or… whatever), Tony ignored his curiosity to respect whatever Steve’s surprise was. The kitchen was clearly off-limits until further notice, as was the dining room that they never actually ate in.

He went back to piddling around, waiting for Steve to be done with whatever the hell he was doing, and eventually Tony found himself in the study again. He had the feeling that he should really be doing something better with his time, so he settled in and started on a last ditch effort to find answers of any kind, even though he’d read any articles about Steve or his family enough times to have them memorized now.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Steve’s voice interrupted his thoughts suddenly.

“Thought I’d find you here.” The man was leaning against the doorway, watching him.

“Yeah, well, you know.” Tony waved his hand vaguely at everything spread out on the table in front of him.

“Yup,” Steve replied, pushing himself off the doorframe. He gathered up the newspapers and books and stacked them neatly, giving Tony a stern look that told him to drop the search. “Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes. Be there or maybe I’ll find a way to stick around just to haunt you.” 

He was already out the door by the time Tony called out, “I definitely would not be opposed to that.” 

Tony went to his room to freshen up, and he actually changed into some nicer clothes because why the hell not? He was pretty sure Steve had been flirting with him the past few days, and after the whole… Icing Incident, what was the harm in digging his own grave a little deeper?

He’d probably checked the clock a good fifteen times while getting ready, nervousness setting in knowing their time was almost out. Figuring it’d be fine to head down a few minutes early, Tony hustled down to the dining room, not wanting to waste another moment that he could spend with Steve.

Of course, Steve was already waiting for him there (because he was definitely the type to be early for everything, which would normally annoy Tony but instead it was just… endearing). The blond was wearing a nice dark blue dress shirt, and Tony couldn’t help but wonder where he’d been hiding _that_ because the color made Steve’s clear blue eyes stand out in the most beautiful way.

Once he was able to tear his eyes away from Steve looking absolutely gorgeous, he realized there were candles on the table, and music softly drifting from the record player in the corner. The food was already set on the table, and it smelled delicious, and Steve looked lovely, and it was all so much that Tony was at a loss for words.

Steve’s nervous shuffling caught Tony’s attention, and he realized he should probably say something at least.

“Wow.” That was always a good start. “...You did all of this?”

The man nodded, though he seemed bashful about taking credit. Judging by the set-up, Tony supposed he hadn’t been imagining the whole flirting thing.

Steve became a little less nervous over the course of dinner, which tasted just as good as it had smelled, though Tony guessed it made sense that he would be a decent cook after taking care of his mother. 

They shared stories while they were eating, joking and laughing through all of them. Steve told him about his adventures growing up in Brooklyn with Bucky, and Tony couldn’t believe that stick of a boy in the old photos used to get into alley fights like it was going out of style.

“I think Buck developed a sixth sense for when I was about to get my ass kicked.” Steve’s expression was full of warmth and happiness, and Tony was relieved the man was able to think of his friend without being weighed down by guilt anymore. “He used to say that he never had to throw the first punch ‘cuz by the time he’d get there, I’d have already thrown at least three.”

Tony shared some stories about the bots back home, and Dum-E’s increasingly tragic attempts at making smoothies (“One of these days he’s going to poison me, I swear.”), and also fondly recalled some wild tales of the shit he and Rhodey got up to at MIT.

“And so you call him ‘platypus’ because of that?” Steve hadn’t stopped laughing through Tony’s entire story, and his own cheeks were hurting from smiling so hard.

“At first it annoyed him, ya know, brought up bad memories, but he’s come to begrudgingly accept it.”

Eventually, the conversation wound down after a few hours, and Steve pushed his chair back from the table and got up, “I made you something.”

“More than this?” Tony gave him a questioning look and gestured to the table. “You didn’t have to…”

He shrugged lightly and tried to play it off while he went to get whatever it was. “Well, it’s not like I get much sleep.”

Before Tony could protest more, Steve was handing him a piece of paper, face down. Gently, Tony took it and flipped it over to find… himself? It was a drawing of him bent over the table in the study, probably while he was working on stuff for S.I. the other day. It was so casual, yet somehow tender at the same time. There were fading traces of a smile in his eyes and lips, like he’d just finished laughing at something Steve had said.

Was this… how Steve saw him? He hadn’t even _known_ Steve was drawing him that day.

“It’s not much…” Steve started after Tony had been quiet for a moment.

Tony swallowed down the lump in his throat. “Steve? What was it that you told me, _‘don’t sell yourself so short?’_ Maybe start practicing what you preach.” The man barked a laugh in response. 

“I don’t… have anything for you though… I couldn’t even manage to break the damn curse.” He carefully put the drawing down on the table, sensing he couldn’t keep down the negative feelings that were rising up. “I couldn’t even do _that_ for you.”

Bright, blue eyes met his own, and he was overwhelmed by the emotion in them. “You’ve given me more than enough. I’ve been miserable and angry for so long that I had lost myself to it. You pulled me out of that, that abyss… and I’m so thankful that you may be the one person out there that’s as stubborn as I am.”

Tony couldn’t hold back a laugh at that, but it came out all wet and emotional-sounding. Hearing his own voice so raw was like opening the floodgates, and he averted his gaze from Steve as he felt his eyes start to water a bit. So much for holding things together through this.

Hesitantly, Steve reached out and cradled Tony’s face in his hand, gently brushing his thumb over his cheek. When Tony looked back at him, tears were starting to form in those beautiful blue eyes.

“Actually… you’ve given me something better,” Steve said so softly that Tony could barely hear the words. 

He took in the way that Steve was looking at him, so openly adoring, and finally leaned forward to close that gap and bring their lips together in a soft kiss.

It was just a chaste kiss, nothing like Tony was used to sharing, and it was better than he could have ever imagined. All traces of the frigid cold that had once surrounded Steve like an impenetrable shield were gone, and instead he was very faintly warm, not quite like a living body, but not quite as ghostly as he had felt before.

His lips were soft and pliant, and Tony lost himself in the gentle press of Steve’s lips against his own. It started tender, as if Steve wasn’t sure if Tony truly wanted this, and oh, he _wanted_. Tony surged forward, threading his fingers through Steve’s hair and deepening the kiss, licking into Steve’s mouth and capturing the taller man’s soft gasp.

They eventually parted, mostly because Tony still needed to breathe, unlike certain people who weren’t held back by humanly restraints like needing oxygen. The second he was able to catch his breath, he clung tightly to Steve, gripping onto the man’s arms as if he would disappear if Tony let go for even a moment. There wasn’t a clock nearby to check, but he knew midnight was drawing ever closer. 

“Steve, I swear to you, we will figure this out. I’ll keep looking for answers while you’re not here, and when you get back, we’ll figure it out.” The words were just pouring out of him, promises that Tony would do anything to keep. “Even if… even if we never figure it out, I’ll keep coming back to you. I’m not going to leave you here alone, I promise.”

“Tony, no, I can’t ask that of you,” Steve protested, reaching up to gently hold Tony’s face with his hands. “You deserve so much more than just twelve days a year. Please don’t throw away your chance at happiness just for me. Don’t let this curse take your future, too.”

“You don’t have to ask me; it’s my decision to make,” Tony started to argue with him, tears threatening to spill over. “Don’t start making decisions for m—“

Steve cut him off with a kiss that was so full of longing, yet so soft and tender, like he was trying to memorize Tony’s lips with his own. Tony felt Steve’s strong arms wrap around him, pulling him flush again the taller man’s broad chest. It was like Steve was trying to put everything he couldn’t say into that one moment, and Tony melted against him, trying to take as much of it in as he could.

He was desperately clinging to Steve with everything he had, like if he held on tightly enough that the curse couldn’t take him. But darkness was slowly creeping into the edges of Tony’s consciousness, almost like he was falling asleep. Steve’s touches became more gentle as the drifting off became harder for Tony to resist…

And gradually he slipped under entirely.

———

Tony jolted upright in bed with a gasp, blinking the fuzziness out of his vision as he looked around his room.

The last thing he could remember was kissing Steve in the dining room, and— oh… Steve. The man must have carried Tony up to his bedroom, and he tried not to dwell too long on the images that line of thought provided. He rubbed at his eyes wearily to chase away the last of the sleepiness, and then he saw the drawing from Steve laid neatly on his bedside table.

Something felt… different, deep in his chest and in the atmosphere of the house, like something incredibly important was now missing. He grabbed his phone to double check the date, even though he already knew the answer. Steve was gone.

He leaned back against the pillows, heart sinking as the loss settled in. It didn’t feel like Steve was gone to whatever awful place he was cursed to while he wasn’t haunting the halls of the inn; it was more like he was completely _gone_.

Like they had broken the curse.

Tony let out a painfully bitter laugh at the realization. What was this, some kind of fairy tale bullshit? Had the curse on the handsome prince been broken by true love’s kiss?

Helping him move on… that had supposedly been the goal all along, right? Only at some point, Tony had started wishing that it wasn’t going to happen; that he could tell Pepper to call off the sale and just spend every Christmas with Steve at this stupid inn.

He can’t even begin to parse all the emotions he’s experiencing in that moment; everything was all mixed up in one awful jumble that he couldn’t even begin to untangle. Grief and loss mixed in with the relief that maybe Steve was somewhere much better now, with something like love tying all of the pain and happiness together.

Tossing back the sheets, he slid out of bed to wander through the house searching for Steve, just in case he was secretly waiting somewhere to jump out and yell surprise like some sort of extremely attractive and sweet jumpscare. The first place he headed to was Steve’s bedroom. When Tony quietly opened the door, he was greeted by the sight of Steve’s belongings neatly packed and setting on the bed, waiting to be put back into storage. Of course Steve was the type to be overly considerate of others when he was the one who was cursed. He fought back the urge the reach out and touch the boxes, knowing they were the only signs of Steve that were left.

As Tony closed the door with a soft click behind him, he could have sworn he saw a flash of movement through the front window. Without a second thought, he sprinted outside, bare feet be damned as he threw open the front door and stepped out into the cold.

The winter sun blinded him for a moment, but when his eyes adjusted to the brightness, Tony could see a familiar form trudging through the snow towards the house. He had to blink a few times and maybe pinch himself just to be sure, but—

That was definitely Steve.

“Oh my god,” he whispered.

Then the realization truly hit him. That was _Steve._ Tony rocketed off the front porch and ran as well as he could through the snow to meet him halfway. When Steve saw him, his face lit up with a smile almost as blinding as the winter sun.

Once they reached each other, Tony threw his arms around Steve’s neck, and strong arms scooped him up, spinning Tony around in a crushing hug. When Steve set him back down, Tony grabbed him by the face, squishing his cheeks as the blond continued to smile adorably. 

“You’re here. It’s Christmas Day, and you’re _here_.” Something else dawned on him, and Tony raised an eyebrow at Steve. “You’re… warm. Like really warm.”

Steve’s eyes were a bit watery when he answered, and Tony was sure he was heading in a similar direction. “I think you broke the curse.”

“What? ...What?! Are you like— oh my god. Steve.” Tony’s hand flew to Steve’s neck as he checked for a pulse. “You… you have a pulse. How—”

“I don’t know! I just woke up in the snow by the edge of the lake, and I came running to find you as soon as I realized it.”

“You know what, that is one question that I’m okay with not having the answer to,” he replied, giving Steve a quick peck of a kiss.

The man laughed warmly and bent down a bit to chase Tony’s lips, but then his brow furrowed. “Wait, aren’t you cold? Where’s your coat?” He rubbed his hands up and down Tony’s arms to generate some heat, but then he looked down at their feet. 

“Why aren’t you wearing shoes,” he said flatly. “Oh my god, _Tony_.”

Tony rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. “Yeah, sorry. Next time you come back from the dead, I’ll try to remember to put some clothes o— oomph!” His sentence was cut off by Steve scooping him up out of the snow, hoisting him up with strong hands under his thighs.

“Okay, that’s— not gonna lie, that’s kinda hot, but are you gonna make it across the yard like this?” Tony asked teasingly, as he wrapped his legs around Steve’s waist. 

It was Steve’s turn to roll his eyes at Tony. “I finally came back from the dead only for my boyfriend to get hypothermia running out in the snow to kiss me.”

“Worth it, to be honest. Also, ‘boyfriend?’” Tony paused, pretending to mull it over. “I think I like the sound of that.”

“Good, ‘cuz now _you’re_ gonna have trouble getting rid of _me._ ”

Steve paused before going up the steps, staring up at the house. “You gonna keep this place?”

“Oh, hell no. Get me out of this Hallmark movie town.” Then Tony hesitated even though Steve laughed at him. “I mean, that is… if that’s alright with you.”

“Fine by me. I think I’ve had enough of this place after seventy years.” He playfully grimaced at the house.

“Oh, thank god.” Tony sighed in relief. “I was really about to do whatever the hell you wanted there.”

When he stepped through the front door, Steve let the brunet down and took Tony’s hands in his. “I think… all this time, I was waiting for you to find me,” Steve said before kissing the tip of Tony’s nose.

“Sorry it took so long,” Tony smiled gently as he leaned his forehead against Steve’s.

“It was worth it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought of it :3c 
> 
> [tumblr](https://elysian-prince.tumblr.com/)  
> 


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